The Washington Independent

Posts Tagged preventive detention

Why Some Civil Libertarians Support an Executive Order on Preventive Detention

By | 07.01.09 | 4:33 pm

So just who are those “civil liberties groups” that have encouraged the Obama administration to issue an executive order creating a system of prolonged preventive detention?

As Spencer wrote today, someone in the administration told ProPublica’s Dafna Linzner and The Washington Post’s Peter Finn that yes, civil liberties groups More…

Kate Martin: Well, Preventive Detention for Whom?

By | 07.01.09 | 4:06 pm

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, read my piece today and emailed over a couple of thoughts about the current debate over preventive detention. (Martin attended the June 9 meeting of the administration’s detention policy task force that I reported on.) She makes the solid More…

Fight Brews Between Civil Liberties Groups and Obama

By | 07.01.09 | 6:00 am

It was a blind quote hitting the civil-libertarian solar plexus. Bad enough that, as ProPublica’s Dafna Linzer and The Washington Post’s Peter Finn reported late on Friday afternoon, the Obama administration was readying an executive order for a system for preventive detention in terrorism cases. President Obama More…

Gibbs Appears to Shoot Down Executive Order on Preventive Detentions

By | 06.30.09 | 12:00 pm

Serves me right for not reading my White House briefing transcript until this morning, but here’s Robert Gibbs yesterday talking about what looked on Friday to be a forthcoming executive order authorizing preventive detentions:

I think the President addressed the notion and the very tough issue that the administration

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Human Rights Watch vs. Preventive Detention

By | 06.29.09 | 3:14 pm

Add Human Rights Watch’s Joanne Mariner to the list of civil libertarians who dissent from the Obama administration’s emerging proposals for preventive detention. This is from a newly released statement from the organization:

“Pursuing a policy of indefinite detention without charge would send the Obama administration down the

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More on Civil Liberties Groups and That Detention Executive Order

By | 06.29.09 | 8:59 am

I’m still trying to figure out how the Obama administration could believe that civil liberties groups gave it cover to issue an executive order authorizing “prolonged detention” of suspected terrorists, as Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn reported on Friday. Ginny Sloan, president of the Constitution Project — which More…

Uh, Which Civil Liberties Groups Want a ‘Prolonged Detention’ Executive Order?

By | 06.26.09 | 6:47 pm

Huge news from Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn. The Obama administration fears that congressional prerogative is going to get in the way of closing Guantanamo Bay by January. So its answer is to cut Congress out of the decision-making and set up a system of “prolonged detention” for an More…

NPR Reports on Specific Proposal for Preventive Detention

By | 06.26.09 | 10:03 am

NPR’s report this morning that the Brookings Institution’s Benjamin Wittes has proposed what’s expected to be a highly influential plan for “preventive detention” — which could lock up “dangerous” terror suspects potentially forever without charge or trial — gives even more urgency to the question that Spencer raised More…

Will SCOTUS Stop Congress’ Power Grab?

By | 06.24.09 | 9:27 am

On Thursday, the Supreme Court will meet to decide, among other things, whether to take up the case of Kiyemba v. Obama, in which the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled that federal courts do not have the power to order any Guantanamo detainees released into More…

Obama DOJ Still Mulling Due Process for Detainees

By | 06.17.09 | 1:28 pm

Attorney General Eric Holder today faced a slew of questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee about just what sort of legal process the Obama administration plans to provide for detainees that the president deems “too dangerous” to release, yet who for whatever reason cannot be tried in a U.S. court More…