Rights

Lietzau will be central to decisions about trying the remaining Guantanamo detainees in reformed military commissions or in federal courts, and to the construction of a new terrorism detention policy.

From one human rights champion to another, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) just issued a statement on yesterday’s passing of Howard Zinn, praising the former Spelman College historian as one “who not only wrote history but lived and made history.”
[I]t was his voice crying out, speaking out, organizing teach-ins against the war in Vietnam that had [...]

For supporters of the bill to grant Washington, D.C., a voting representative in Congress, it may be 2010 or never. At least that’s the warning coming from former Rep. Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican who championed the D.C.-vote bill for years — to no avail.
You might remember that the proposal came as close as it’s [...]

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo has been spewing his grandiose views on presidential power ever since leaving the Bush administration. So although his latest book, “Crisis And Command,” is an unusually ambitious 446-page historical survey of executive power from George Washington to George W. Bush, his thesis will hardly surprise anyone who’s followed [...]

The Wall Street Journal, Pat Buchanan and others are already condemning the Obama administration for treating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a civilian criminal rather than an illegal warrior to whom we can presumably do whatever we please. We are in “a war,” The Journal reiterated today — as did Buchanan, debating my colleague Spencer Ackerman [...]

The New York Times’ editorial board weighs in today in favor of Rep. Jerrold Nadler’s (D-N.Y.) proposed legislation to effectively overturn two recent Supreme Court cases that significantly narrowed the ability of many victims to have their day in court.
Congress has held two hearings already on the cases of Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic [...]

Late on Friday, the Department of Justice quietly filed an unclassified, heavily redacted version (see below) of its argument why a New York federal court should not dismiss the case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an accused conspirator in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Ghailani’s lawyers had argued that the [...]

The New York Times editorial board weighs in today in defense of Col. Morris Davis, the Air Force officer fired from the Congressional Research Service after he publicly criticized the government’s handling of Guantanamo detainee cases. That’s sure to ratchet up the pressure on CRS to reinstate Davis.
Davis is the former chief military prosecutor for [...]

Here’s a nice catch by Dafna Linzer at ProPublica. At yesterday’s press conference, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs made two statements about the Obama administration’s connection to the more than 200 Guantanamo detainees left at the prison camp.
First, Gibbs told reporters that more transfers of Guantanamo detainees out of the prison camp “have taken place [...]

Among the objections from Congressional Republicans to transferring Guantanamo detainees from Cuba to Illinois is the fear that the prisoners will suddenly have many more rights by virtue of being on U.S. soil.
But is that true?
Actually, it’s not clear, Scott Silliman, a professor at Duke University Law School and director of the Center for Law, [...]