Last week, Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Republicans from Texas, urged the Obama administration to take action against the drug violence along the southern border after U.S. citizens were killed in Juarez. Texas governor Rick Perry echoed the senators’ concerns, asking More…
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) – last seen slandering Justice Department lawyers and then distancing himself from Liz Cheney’s similar slanders — goes way further than Sen. Lindsey Graham’s objections to a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He writes in a New York Daily News More…
Apparently the Justice Department found that Eric Holder ought to have disclosed to the Senate the fact that he signed onto an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in 2004 for the Jose Padilla case. As a result, Republican senators are up in arms, according to The New York More…
So one of the so-called “Gitmo Nine” Justice Department lawyers attacked by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is Tony West. West, the associate attorney general for the civil division of Justice, defended John Walker Lindh, the California rich kid sentenced to 20 years More…
It’s not just Alberto Gonzales. Adam Serwer talks to John Bellinger, who served as Condoleezza Rice’s legal adviser at the State Department and the National Security Council, about the Grassley/Sessions/Cheneyite smears on the Justice Department lawyers who represented Guantanamo detainees:
“I think it’s unfortunate that these individuals are
From Jake Tapper at ABC:
Justice Department spokesman Matthew Miller said today that Justice Department officials “will not participate in an attempt to drag people’s names through the mud for political purposes.”
Miller said that one of the hallmarks of “our nation’s legal system is that attorneys provide faithful
Mark Hosenball checks facts. After the Obama administration averred that the Justice Department successfully secured the convictions or guilty pleas of about 300 people in terrorism cases during the Bush era, GOP apparatchiks like ex-White House spokeswoman Dana Perino and even Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called Obama a liar. More…
The most significant quote in this Washington Post piece about the post-Northwest Airlines Flight 253 debate on national security comes from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.):
“Instead of trying to excuse the inexcusable, the administration should take responsibility for the dire consequences of its decision to swiftly grant civilian rights
Building off Matt’s excellent post about today’s outbreak of GOP enthusiasm for torture and lawlessness, check out this just-released paper from Ken Gude at the Center for American Progress separating myths from facts about the military commissions, civilian courts, and interrogations with lawyers present. For instance, here’s More…
It’s quite a spectacle to watch members of Congress — all of whom have sworn an oath to support the U.S. Constitution — brag about their disdain for the right to due process, which is guaranteed by the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment (even for foreign nationals suspected of crimes in the More…
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