I just stepped off an airplane from Gitmo last night and thought it would be a good time to offer an insider’s take on what really happened down there this week. Unlike the many stories that have been in the press, what follows is a view from the defense table that provides a fuller perspective on the proceedings than what’s been reported.
As you might know, the ACLU has, along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), created the John Adams Project, through which we have sponsored expert civilian counsel to team up with the military defense lawyers representing the 9/11 defendants. It’s part of our ongoing struggle to bring a modicum of fairness to these sham prosecutions and to get Guantánamo shut down for once and for all.
As I write this today our struggle to shut Gitmo and shutter the military commissions is far from over and is anything but a fait accompli.
You probably read in the papers that on Monday, all five defendants expressed an interest in entering guilty pleas in the 9/11 case.This wasn’t unexpected news to anyone, as they essentially expressed that viewpoint from the very first hearing in June of this year.
What did change was that the defendants have been meeting as a group since the last hearing. They have recently asked to have all pending law and evidentiary motions withdrawn and that they be allowed to proceed to enter guilty pleas and be sentenced to death. All five men submitted a handwritten motion to the military judge on November 4, 2008 (Election Day) stating that this is how they would like to proceed.
Read more…
This Thanksgiving we are reflecting on what family means to us. For those of us at the ACLU and many people across the country, that will bring to mind what happened to families in California as a result of Prop 8.
So — in what is becoming an ACLU tradition — I’m writing to share some pointers for talking turkey this Thanksgiving about issues that really matter.
Here’s my biggest piece of advice for when Prop 8 and gay marriage come up over the Thanksgiving dinner table: Don’t shy away from the conversation. Do what I’m hoping thousands of ACLU supporters will do over the holidays. Talk to someone you’ve never talked to about same sex marriage and explain that it’s just not right to deny someone their freedom because of who they are or who they love.
Read more…
(Originally posted on Huffington Post.)
It’s already a time-worn cliché when we say that the election of Barack Obama is historic. I still like saying it. Let me share some of my personal reflections on why this election seems historic and hopeful for a sometimes jaded Executive Director.
Like many of you on Tuesday night, I was celebrating the end of the Bush era and the beginning of a historic one. My partner and I went to four festive and fun election parties that night. And then while lying in bed that night, excitedly talking about the world, we reflected on what that night’s election meant for us.
My partner remarked that he was born in 1954, and that the year he was born, African-American little boys like him were still legally put in "separate but equal" schools. Then Brown vs. Board of Education changed all that. And today, an African-American ascends to the highest office of the greatest nation. I remarked that when I was a little boy in the Bronx public housing projects, I never thought I could be president of ANYTHING when I grew up. I only believed I could go to college when I was a high school sophomore after receiving a letter telling me I was offered early admission at a community college. That was the first day I realized I would not have to be a waiter like my father who came from Puerto Rico and worked at the Warwick Hotel for 39 years. I told my partner that my Mom still proudly tells me that I was always smart, ambitious, and focused on school. But I never aspired for anything more than a job like my dad’s because I never thought it was possible. My dad was the only great role model I knew and I wanted to be just like him.
On Tuesday, all the African-American, Latino, poor of all races, and disenfranchised of all countries got the best of role models. Everyone knows who the U.S. president is, and now literally billions of little boys and girls who may have otherwise set their sights too low will invariably set them higher. If nothing more happens (and our collective job is to make sure a lot more happens), change will indeed happen by having a President Barack Obama inspire new generations of little boys and girls to write, "I want to be President when I grow up." No one will dare ridicule them because of the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their sexual orientation, or convince them that the odds are insurmountable. Tuesday inspired many, but the best of those we inspired we won’t know for generations to come.
For our generation, however, we have to help realize the greatness that President Obama represents. It’s not all on him. He needs us. He has two raging wars, a failing economy where good folks are losing their homes and can’t drive their cars because they don’t have the cash to go the pump, and where they avoid going to the doctor because they can’t afford the bills that will come in the mail. Those are not ACLU priorities, but they are American priorities that President Obama confronts. Solutions to these problems won’t be easy, as he will have to contend with well-moneyed lobbyists from pharmaceuticals, oil companies and military contractors opposing him at every turn. Solutions to those issues will require partisan horse trading with Republicans and Democrats alike — and I worry that he will have to water down what he wants and ultimately give up the Progressive Caucus to get the Blue Dogs and Conservative/Moderate Wing of Republican party, as well as the "Independent" likes of Joe Lieberman (smile).
But our issues and our top agenda are easy by comparison. He doesn’t have to contend with lobbyists in client-bought Ferragamos. Our issues won’t require partisan horse-trading, congressional action, faux hearings and bipartisan committees that deliberate but never deliver.
Our top issue — closing down Gitmo and shutting down the military commissions — can be done as soon as he lifts his left hand, picks up the new presidential pen and signs an executive order closing Gitmo and ending the military commissions once and for all. Call me naive, but I honestly believe he wants to do it. He promised us that on the campaign trail, and I believe it was more than an empty promise. I believe he knows what he needs to do to restore the America we believe in, to get us on back on track, to give us back our America, an America we never stopped believing in but have sorely missed for the past eight years.
With a stroke of his pen on Day One, a good, courageous president can do that — as long as he listens to himself and to our pleas. As long as he doesn’t listen to the centrist and DLC types who tell him, "It’s too complicated." "It’s tougher than it looks." "Take your time." "We need message discipline — you don’t want to do what Clinton did with gays in the military. The nation wasn’t ready."
But what these so-called experts might forget is that America IS ready. The world is ready. And we need a courageous, optimistic president ready to say back to them, "I don’t want America to live with the stain of President Bush’s Guantánamo prison camp and his flawed commissions for one day longer. I’m closing them today. You tell me how we are going to accomplish that and begin cleaning up the mess we inherited."
They’re not likely to give him a solution — just their view of the realpolitik. They may play for time, and "get back to him" as he turns his attention elsewhere. But the solution to the stain on America’s pride is in fact really easy: criminally charge all the Guantánamo detainees for whom the government has good evidence. Those we can’t charge, you have to release. For those being tried in kangaroo military commissions, transfer them to federal criminal courts or to courts governed by the U.S. Code of Military Justice. Those are the best systems of justice in the world where the Constitution still stands for something. Let’s use them.
President Obama needs us. Even for the most extraordinary of men like him, his head must be spinning from the "expert" advice he’s getting on a range of issues. Other pressing issues will take time, compromise and horse-trading. Our top issue — closing Gitmo and shutting down the military commissions — just requires us to remind him that that’s what we want; that we have his back when the critics come after him for doing so. We can tell him that we understand that the best of presidents who want to do the right thing are better able to do so when the public, fans and supporters respectfully demand action. Like Dr. King forcing the hand of JFK. Both their legacies benefited from that pressure. And the nation remembers them fondly, even if there were tensions between them. We understand that. I have to believe President Obama understands that.
So let’s get to work to help Mr. Obama be the best president ever. A courageous commander-in-chief, who tells West Wing advisors sipping lattes in Italian calfskin loafers what they have to do, rather than ask the George Bush question, "What should we do?"
In today’s New York Times, we’re running a full-page ad urging President-Elect Obama to close Guantánamo Bay and shut down the military commissions on his first day in the White House. Take a look at the ad.
Today, we’re also launching the first in a powerful series of short videos produced by filmmaker Robert Greenwald, the award-winning director and producer of documentaries including "Outfoxed" and "Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties." Check out the first video now. You can find Robert’s video on closegitmo.com.
We’re hosting an open Town Hall Meeting on Thursday, November 13, when concerned citizens from all across the nation will gather via teleconference to brainstorm how we help Barack Obama take the steps we all want towards freedom on Day One. We can help him do the right thing, we can give him cover and we can respond to his advisors that it not as hard to close Gitmo and shut down Bush’s military commissions as we’re being told. We can’t wait. The world can’t wait. Our America can’t wait. We want it back and need him to get us back on track.
You are invited to this strategy session to help the president do the right thing that’s in his gut. Go to www.aclu.org/townhall for more information and to sign up.
For eight years, patriotic Americans have led the battle against the most un-American policies in recent history. The Bush administration created a prison camp at Guantánamo — a place where they claimed the law didn’t apply. They have detained hundreds of men without charge or trial, prosecuted others in unconstitutional military commissions and authorized torture.
Now, you can help us and our new president seize a dramatic opportunity for progress. You can help this historic president make history on Day One — not a day too soon. Before the weeds and vines of politics-as-usual creep over our hope and smother its light, let’s come together and demand a new beginning and a new day — on the first day. We can and will close Gitmo, and we can shut down the un-American military commissions. It takes a president, but he needs his people. Not his advisors.
Help us reach him. Help President-elect Obama. Help America.
Get involved: Watch our first "Close Gitmo" video, check out our New York Times ad and sign up for our Town Hall Meeting.
If not for us, do it for those legions of little boys and girls who now have a role model they believe in. Let’s not lose their hope in him, in us, and let’s not let their incipient hope in themselves dissipate. Hope is too hard won. And too easily lost.
(Originally posted on Huffington Post.)
President-elect Barack Obama will become chief executive of a nation that has been greatly weakened — in particular, our freedoms, our values, and our international reputation have been significantly undermined by the policies of the past eight years. Presidents have enormous power not only to set the legislative agenda, but also to establish policy by executive order, federal regulation, or simply by refocusing the efforts and emphases of the executive agencies. President-elect Obama must use all of these tools to restore our freedoms and move the country forward.
In preparation for the transition to a new presidential administration next year, I asked my staff to look at what a new president could do to begin to reverse the damage that has been done in the past 8 years to this great nation. What I got back — from experts on a wide variety of subjects from throughout the ACLU — was very revealing. And it brought home just how off-track our presidential campaigns have become.
As you can see here: www.aclu.org/transition, some of the items were self evident for us: stop torture, close Guantanamo, shut down the military commissions, end "extraordinary renditions" in which suspects are kidnapped by the CIA and sent to countries where they are tortured. All of these practices are abominations — violations of our nation’s dearest principles and a blotch on America’s good name. Those are actions the next president, whoever he turns out to be, should take on his first day in office.
Our other priorities are nearly as clear: steps such as ending warrantless spying on Americans, fixing the nation’s broken watch list system, banning discrimination against sexual minorities in federal employment, stopping the monitoring of peaceful political activists, and restoring the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division as a meaningful body.
But what is really striking is when you move down to the next level. I received dozens and dozens of action items from throughout our broad, multi-issue organization — issues that are never going to make the front page of the newspaper, but which can have a dramatic effect on the lives of Americans.
Let me give you just one example. Until recently, residents of public housing were to be evicted from their homes whenever criminal activity took place in those units — without exception. But one result of this "get tough" law was that women who were victims of domestic violence were being evicted from their units because of the crime that took place there — the domestic violence — even though they were the victim of the crime!
Congress fixed this absurdity in the 2005 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). But today, more than two years after enactment, the Bush Administration has still not acted to implement the fix. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has not issued regulations interpreting and explaining the law, and has distributed inaccurate information about how it applies. As a result, many public housing authorities remain unaware of the new law and have not trained their staff on the new protections.
It’s a fair bet you’re never going to see that issue raised in a presidential debate, or read about it on a bumper sticker, or on the front page of your newspaper. Probably not in the back pages either. I worry that even the "big" issues like closing Guantánamo, shutting down the military commissions, and prohibiting torture and rendition will literally be thrown under the bus in a new administration. As I read over the list of requests our staff has compiled, it is striking how many issues are like this — vital, important issues that affect many lives, but which we have a dim hope of ever setting directly before the American people.
The country’s civil liberties "to do" list really brings home just how sweeping the power of the president of the United States is. The often obscure actions of various deputy assistant secretaries will together probably make as much difference to Americans as the new president’s actions on the headline issues of our times. We need leadership at the top. And President Obama ought to act swiftly on day one by picking up his pen and signing executive orders that shut down Guantánamo and the military commissions and ban torture and rendition. Once he crosses those off of his "to do" list, we can pick up on the many other things that need to get done. But leadership needs to start on day one.
(Our Executive Director, Anthony D. Romero, sent out a heartfelt letter to supporters yesterday. Below is an edited version. Originally posted on Huffington Post.)
I’m angry and heartsick about what may happen in California on November 4th.
In the most personal way possible, I’m asking you for a favor: help us ensure that gay couples all across California keep their fundamental right to marriage — the basic right to be treated just like anybody else.
I hope you will forgive the indulgence when I speak from the heart and tell you my personal story.
You see, I grew up in a loving and supportive household, where my family believed I could be anything I chose — anything except being an openly gay man. Neither of my parents finished high school, and yet, they believed I could accomplish all I set out to do as I went off to Princeton University and Stanford Law School.
They got me through the toughest of times, scrimped and saved, and always believed that failure wasn’t in the cards for me. They had more faith in me than I often had in myself. Whenever my parents visited me at Princeton, my Dad would slip a $20 bill in my pocket when my Mom wasn’t looking. I never had the courage to tell him that the $20 wouldn’t go very far towards my bills, books and tuition. But, it was his support and belief in me that sustained me more than the tens of thousands of dollars I received in scholarships.
When I finished college, they were hugely proud of my — and their — accomplishments. That was until I told them I was gay and wanted to live life as an openly gay man.
Though I always knew I was gay, I didn’t come out to them for many years, as I was afraid of losing the love and support that had allowed me to succeed against all odds. When I did tell them, they cried and even shouted. I ended up leaving their home that night to spend a sleepless night on a friend’s sofa. We were all heartbroken.
When my Mom and I spoke later, my Mom said, "But, Antonio (that’s the name she uses with me), hasn’t your life been hard enough? People will hurt you and hate you because of this." She, of course, was right — as gay and lesbian people didn’t only suffer discrimination from working-class, Puerto Rican Catholics, but from the broader society. She felt that I had escaped the public housing projects in the Bronx, only to suffer another prejudice — one that might be harder to beat — as the law wasn’t on my side. At the time, it felt like her own homophobia. Now I see there was also a mother’s love and a real desire to protect her son. She was not wrong at a very fundamental level. She knew that treating gay and lesbian people like second class citizens — people who may be worthy of “tolerance, ” as some assert, but not of equality — was and still is the last socially-acceptable prejudice.
Even before I came out to them, I struggled to accept myself as a gay man. I didn’t want to lose the love of my family, and I wanted a family of my own — however I defined it. I ultimately chose to find my own way in life as a gay man. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds even though it was the mid-1980s. I watched loved ones and friends die of AIDS. I was convinced I would never see my 40th birthday, much less find a partner whom I could marry.
As years passed, my Mom, Dad and I came to a peace, and they came to love and respect me for who I am. They even came to defend my right to live with equality and dignity — often fighting against the homophobia they heard among their family and friends and in church.
The right to be equal citizens and to marry whomever we wish — unimaginable to me when I first came out — is now ours to lose in California unless we stand up for what’s right. All of us must fight against what’s wrong. In my 43 short years of life, I have seen gay and lesbian people go from pariahs and objects of legally-sanctioned discrimination to being on the cusp of full equality. The unimaginable comes true in our America if we make it happen. But, it requires effort and struggle.
One of the things I love about the ACLU is that it’s an organization that understands we are all in this together. We recognize that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Given what’s at stake in the outcome of this election, I am personally appealing to you for help to fight the forces of intolerance from carrying the day in California next Tuesday.
If you have friends and family in California, please contact them right now, and ask them to vote NO on Proposition 8. You can send them a message here.
We need to make sure people keep in mind that gay people are part of every family and every community — that like everyone else, gay people want the same rights to commit to their partners, to take care of each other and to take responsibility for each other. We shouldn’t deny that, and we shouldn’t write discrimination into any constitution in any state. Certainly, we can’t let that happen in California after the highest court in the state granted gay and lesbian people their full equality.
Unfortunately, due to a vicious, deceitful $30 million advertising blitz, the supporters of Prop 8 may be within days of taking that fundamental right away.
To stop the forces of discrimination from succeeding, we have to win over conflicted voters who aren’t sure they’re ready for gay marriage but who are also uncomfortable going into a voting booth and stripping away people’s rights. With the ACLU contributing time, energy and millions of dollars to the effort, we’re working hard to reach those key voters before next Tuesday.
If you have friends and family in California, please contact them right now, and ask them to vote NO on Proposition 8. Share this email with them. Call them. Direct them to the ACLU of Northern California’s Prop. 8 webpage for more information.
Don’t let other young people grow up to be afraid to be who they are because of the discrimination and prejudice they might face. Let them see a future that the generation before them couldn’t even dream of — a future as full and equal citizens of the greatest democracy on earth.
As Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." As we strive to defeat Prop. 8 and the injustice it represents, the ACLU is trying to make that arc a little shorter.
On behalf of my Mom and family, and on behalf of all the people who will never face legally-sanctioned discrimination, I thank you for being part of this struggle and for doing everything you can to help.
It is a privilege and honor to have you as allies in this fight for dignity and equality.
For additional information on Prop. 8 and tools for advancing LGBT equality in your community, visit www.aclu.org/getequal.
(Originally posted on HuffingtonPost.)
We are on the eve of one of the most important presidential elections in history and turnout is expected to reach record highs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are far too many barriers blocking millions of Americans from exercising the right to vote, one of our most fundamental and precious rights. The last thing this country needs right now is another election that leaves us uncertain of its legitimacy. Unfortunately, there are enough shenanigans going on right now that there is serious reason to be concerned.
In Michigan, two statewide voter purge programs could potentially disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in advance of next month’s election.
Under one voter removal program, the Michigan Department of State, which administers both driver’s license and voter registration records, immediately cancels the voter registrations of voters who obtain driver’s licenses in other states instead of issuing the appropriate confirmation of registration notices and following the required voter removal procedures mandated by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA). According to the Department’s own figures, over 280,000 voters per year are removed from the rolls in this manner.
Under the second voter removal program, a Michigan state law requires local clerks to cancel the registrations of newly-registered voters whenever their original voter identification cards are returned by the post office as undeliverable. Detroit elections officials report that nearly 30,000 voters per year in that city alone are removed from the rolls as a result of this election law, which violates the NVRA and other federal and state laws.
The ACLU — along with the Advancement Project — fought these programs in court to protect the integrity of this year’s election. And just yesterday, a federal judge found both programs to be illegal. The judge ordered state officials to restore the names of 1,438 people who have been unlawfully purged from the rolls this year.
Felony disenfranchisement is another obstacle blocking millions of Americans’ access to the polls. For these people, their voting rights have been revoked for periods ranging from the time spent incarcerated to a lifetime. Yes, in 11 states, you can lose your right to vote for life. In many other states, partisan election officials are denying formerly incarcerated people the right to vote in direct violation of the law.
Alabama denies voting rights to individuals who have been convicted of felonies involving "moral turpitude," even though the state constitution does not define which felonies fall into this ambiguous and antiquated category. Thousands of Alabamians are disenfranchised under a much broader category of convictions than is permissible under the Constitution, relying in part on an unlawful opinion issued by the state attorney general.
Although the Mississippi Constitution permits people who have been convicted of a crime to vote for president and vice president, election administrators are denying that right in practice. In that state, there is a de facto blanket disenfranchisement of all people with felony convictions.
And in Arizona and Tennessee, the restoration of voting rights for people convicted of crimes is contingent on the payment of all outstanding legal financial obligations, including restitution and child support fees. The effect of these laws is nothing more than a modern-day poll tax that requires people to pay fees before they are eligible to vote.
Through litigation, the ACLU is actively challenging felony disenfranchisement in all of these states, as well as other infringements upon voting rights. In fact, just last week we won a major victory in Ohio, when two courts sided with us and upheld a weeklong period in which new voters can register and cast an absentee ballot on the same day.
If the 2004 election is any indicator, we can expect many more voter suppression tactics to pop up between now and Election Day — things like voter intimidation masquerading as “poll watching,” misleading campaigns providing false election information, malfunctioning voting machines, unfounded accusations of fraud and many, many more.
The right to vote is protected by more constitutional amendments than any other right we have — the 1st, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that the right to vote is protective of all rights. Yet, in practice, that precious right is too often trampled upon. From voter purges to felony disenfranchisement to unreliable technology, the concerted effort to suppress voting in this country is completely at odds with our democratic principles and downright un-American.
For more information on the ACLU’s work to protect voting rights, go to www.votingrights.org.
On this day 232 years ago, our founders brought forth a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal. With their minds set on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they proceeded to lay the foundation of a great nation to be governed by the will of the people, bestowed with a balance of power among the branches of government, and free of tyranny.
The fight to preserve our essential liberties is as important today as it was then. Over the last seven years, those in power in this country have brought forth a steady stream of threats to the fundamental rights enshrined in our Constitution. From freedom of speech and the right to habeas corpus, to the right to vote and be treated equally under the law, so many of our personal liberties have come under attack.
This weekend, as we enjoy our barbecues, our baseball games, and our fireworks, we should also take a moment to remember that there can be no greater tribute to a nation born of the desire to protect individual freedom and liberty than to stand up for those very founding principles when they are attacked.
Patriotism doesn’t mean blindly following the will of a few. It means being part of an informed and involved citizenry. It means exercising dissent by speaking out when you don’t believe in what is happening. It means being constantly vigilant in the protection of civil liberties, and holding government officials accountable when they take aim at our freedoms. And above all, patriotism means loving this country so much that we will fight to protect the things that make it great for generations to come.
This Independence Day, join us in celebrating our great nation by remembering the things upon which it was founded: Liberty and Justice for all.
On Thursday, I will be at Guantánamo Bay watching five men appear before a military commission as they hear the charges read against them. The charges are dire: the men are accused of participating in one of the worst and most tragic crimes of all time — the September 11 attacks. The sentence could be death.
There has been a lot of debate about how these men should be prosecuted. The answer is right in front of us. When our government wants to prove a defendant has committed a crime — even an egregious one — it must ensure that when the final gavel comes down, we can walk away with some assurance that, whether we agree with it or not, the outcome is legitimate. To ensure that legitimacy, the government follows the Constitution. It provides defendants with the right to a lawyer, the presumption of innocence, and due process. It collects its evidence and fights like hell to prove its case "beyond a reasonable doubt" in a court of law, and allows the accused to wage a meaningful defense. That’s how we define American justice, it’s what separates us from our enemies, and it’s how the government should prosecute the detainees at Guantánamo. We do not change the rules depending on who is being prosecuted and what they are accused of — that would defeat the whole purpose. But that is exactly what’s happening with the Guantánamo military commissions.
For starters, the government resources allocated to the prosecution and defense are completely lopsided. While the prosecution has the full force of the U.S. government behind it, including the military and the Department of Justice, detainees are usually provided with only two JAG lawyers who might not have death penalty experience.
Although the American Civil Liberties Union has been monitoring the military commissions proceedings since they started in 2004 and continues to do so, it made the decision in April that it could be more effective by stepping in to help balance the scales. Having determined that the best way to fight the system and attempt to correct it is from within, we have put together teams of expert civilian attorneys to join under-resourced military defense counsel. In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the detainees being arraigned on Thursday who is accused of being the 9-11 "mastermind," Idaho attorneys David Nevin and Scott McKay, as well as Gary Sowards, a capital defense attorney who represented "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, will be on the defense team. Nevin, McKay and Sowards are part of the ACLU’s John Adams Project, named after one of our nation’s founders who committed to the principle of fair trials represented British soldiers accused of killing Americans in the Boston Massacre when other attorneys refused to do so. Renowned capital defender Denise LeBoeuf, founding Director of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, will be coordinating the Project for the ACLU.
The ACLU has allocated $3 million for the first year of the Project, and has set aside $15 million for future expenses. As our tradition of defending due process and the Constitution demand, we will be there fighting these farcical proceedings every step of the way.
The ACLU’s efforts have been openly supported by respected figures like Retired Rear Admiral John Hutson, former CIA and FBI Director William Webster, former Attorney General Janet Reno, and families of 9-11 victims. These are people who passionately want justice done, but who also realize the importance of getting it right.
Military defense counsel has welcomed the outside assistance, acknowledging their lack of resources and the necessity of attorneys with death penalty expertise and national security experience. Despite the assistance of civilian defense counsel, the military commissions are fundamentally flawed by their brazen neglect of due process. They allow convictions based on confessions possibly derived from torture, secret evidence a defendant cannot rebut, and hearsay evidence. The government has already acknowledged waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Any Law & Order junkie can tell you there’s something deeply wrong with this picture.
The commissions have also become inherently politicized, as is evidenced by the removal of Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann from another military commission case for exerting "unlawful command influence." It seems his dual role of supervising the prosecution and providing legal advice to the ostensibly independent "Convening Authority" of the commissions, along with his willingness to use coerced evidence and his desire to prosecute "sexy" cases that would capture the public’s attention, didn’t even cut it in this biased system.
The military commissions that have been attempted so far have been riddled with false starts and legal challenges to their very legitimacy. Not a single one has been completed. Only one plea bargain has been struck: the nine-month sentence for David Hicks, the so-called "Australian Taliban."
The Bush administration is careening down the wrong path at great cost to America’s constitutional principles and international reputation. Instead of jamming these proceedings through before the next election while making up the rules along the way, it should take a hard look at the problems these farcical cases have encountered so far and abandon them before it digs itself deeper into this abyss. There is no reason these prosecutions cannot occur in our tried and true criminal justice system or military courts that follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice, both of which are able to deal with national security issues and come fully equipped with constitutional safeguards.
Why does this matter? Because how we respond to the atrocities thrust upon us on 9/11 says everything about who we are as a nation. The manner in which we seek justice against those accused of harming us will determine whether the United States will be seen at home and abroad as a nation of laws, or as a nation willing to forsake our values at a time when it’s most important to uphold them. If we choose the latter, we all lose.
We can be pretty sure that each new day will bring two things: new threats to our civil liberties, and new stories of people standing up for their rights and winning. From the chilling to the triumphant, there is always something to talk about.
With that in mind, we’re re-launching the ACLU blog, with a new look, a new name, and a new invitation to join in the dialogue.
Welcome to the ACLU Blog of Rights!
We envision this blog as a marketplace of ideas and discourse on pressing civil liberties issues, from surveillance and extraordinary rendition to religious freedom and the rights of protestors.
To get things underway, today begins our inaugural online symposium. The symposium will be a recurring feature on this blog, bringing together an ideologically diverse group of bloggers and writers to focus on pressing civil liberties issues.
Our first symposium will explore our government’s use of torture. With recent revelations like the Yoo memo and the White House sanctioning of torture, along with congressional hearings, lawsuits and possible subpoena fights, it’s crucial to continue the robust discussion of what torture means to the United States and American values.
We’ve been working with Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald to put together this symposium, and we’re excited to welcome some of the nation’s leading writers on the topic of torture. I encourage you to take a look.
People who know the importance of defending the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, like the more than 500,000 card-carrying members of the ACLU, don’t just live on the coasts in cities like San Francisco and New York. They are spread all over America, from the Midwest to the Southeast. This blog is a place where everyone concerned about civil liberties can come together.
Whether you’re in San Diego or Salt Lake City, and whether or not you carry an ACLU membership card in your wallet, we hope you’ll be a regular visitor to Blog of Rights. Please join us in keeping civil liberties at the forefront of public dialogue.
 Someone sent me this Colbert clip yesterday and I think it’s spot-on about the so-called “compromise” that the Bush administration and a few Republicans crafted on detainee treatment. That deal resulted in last week’s horrible vote, which effectively lifted habeas corpus and further crippled our compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
True to form, Colbert has some choice words for Republicans and Democrats, but whatever your views on the parties, opposition to the White House’s torture and detention policies has never been more necessary - or we’ll turn around and wake up in a very different country than the one we know and love.
The news isn’t all bad. As Lisa told us so early last Saturday morning, hours after the loss on tribunals, we were able to hold back a vote that would have written the Bush illegal spy program into law, and handed the president a get-out-of-jail-free card for violating the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and FISA. That vote still may come, so we all must remain vigilant. But they sure would have liked to take it home and campaign with it, and they cannot.
(The other good news is that Stephen Colbert probably still has the ACLU membership card I gave him when I appeared on the show. I bet he’s been taking it out and looking at it a bit more often recently …)
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