Several GOP presidential candidates have called for eliminating the department, including U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Others have called for at least weakening it.

Tom Harkin

“How much it’s involved and how it’s involved is open for debate obviously, that’s open for discussion,” Harkin said of the department. “But to say that the federal government has no role in elementary, secondary education, or any education is just nonsense. We have a role, we have a very important role to play.”

Harkin said since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 there’s been an expression of the federal government having a role in education of the territories, and even suggested the preamble of the U.S. Constitution calls for the federal government being involved in education.

“I submit to you that you can’t promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty without education,” Harkin said.

He also said the United States is “still one nation,” and every state and district has an interest in making sure children don’t fall through the cracks.

“A child who’s ill-educated in one state may not just be a burden in that state, that child can move to Iowa or Nebraska or Minnesota, you get my point,” Harkin said. “So we have a national interest in this from that standpoint.”

But Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was quick to acknowledge there is a division in Congress and among the American people about the role of the federal government in education.

He said his committee has had that debate over the last year as they’ve worked on the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act of 2011, which was just approved out of committee on a bipartisan vote.

“That’s fine, but that doesn’t mean they’re irrevocable differences,” Harkin said. “It just means we have to get together and try to find a meeting ground, a common ground on which we can move forward, and I believe we’ve done that in this bill.”

That bill largely does away with No Child Left Behind, Harkin said, a controversial act passed in 2001. Harkin made the comments during a tour of the Des Moines Public Schools’ Downtown School on Friday morning.

“I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics,” Myers wrote, according to a report at City Pages.

Politifact rated Bachmann’s statements about the U.S. Constitution’s census requirements in 2009 as “Pants on Fire” false. CNN’s Anderson Cooper dinged Bachmann back in January for her revisionist history regarding the U.S. Constitution’s racist past.

Here’s Myers’ full letter:

Dear Representative Bachmann,

My name is Amy Myers. I am a Cherry Hill, New Jersey sophomore attending Cherry Hill High School East. As a typical high school student, I have found quite a few of your statements regarding The Constitution of the United States, the quality of public school education and general U.S. civics matters to be factually incorrect, inaccurately applied or grossly distorted. The frequency and scope of these comments prompted me to write this letter.

Though I am not in your home district, or even your home state, you are a United States Representative of some prominence who is subject to national media coverage. News outlets and websites across this country profile your causes and viewpoints on a regular basis. As one of a handful of women in Congress, you hold a distinct privilege and responsibility to better represent your gender nationally. The statements you make help to serve an injustice to not only the position of Congresswoman, but women everywhere. Though politically expedient, incorrect comments cast a shadow on your person and by unfortunate proxy, both your supporters and detractors alike often generalize this shadow to women as a whole.

Rep. Bachmann, the frequent inability you have shown to accurately and factually present even the most basic information about the United States led me to submit the follow challenge, pitting my public education against your advanced legal education:

I, Amy Myers, do hereby challenge Representative Michele Bachmann to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics.

Hopefully, we will be able to meet for such an event, as it would prove to be enlightening.

Sincerely yours,
Amy Myers

Yet, a highly decentralized movement and diversity of political interests within Iowa’s tea party may prove difficult for Republican candidates to make solid waves in Iowa, a key 2012 early contest.

Monday, The Family Leader chief executive and three-time gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats appeared in Washington, D.C., to speak at a press conference with William Temple, founder of the Tea Party Founding Fathers. Vander Plaats used the opportunity to call for “exceptional leadership” from the candidate who will ultimately face President Barack Obama in 2012.

“I’m telling Iowans and others across the country that America needs a President that will lead on tax reform, on reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, on drastically cutting discretionary spending, and who will refuse to spend more than we take in,” Vander Plaats said Monday in D.C.

Temple is in the process of planning a tea party rally in Kansas City this fall similar to the rally he held in Washington D.C. in 2009. He contacted Vander Plaats to help, which Vander Plaats said he agreed to do.

“I think he knows Iowa is a lead-off state, and wants candidates who [also] realize that to attend this rally and really have the chance to address the core issues of the tea party movement,” Vander Plaats said of Temple.

The movement has already shown political success in 2008 and 2010 elections, said Ryan Rhodes, chairman of the Iowa Tea Party.

“In state [legislative] races, you’re starting to see more people with tea party influences,” he said.

But even with all its given momentum, the movement — both in Iowa and nationally — is hard to classify. There are many different values and interests within the group, which in turn makes it difficult to unify and have a singular voice on issues. Most who consider themselves activists agree they want limited government by repealing health care reform, returning to the basic Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution and implementing fiscally conservative measures.  Several are against Democrat-centric ideas of government spending and creating more government-funded programs.

In an April article, The Des Moines Register quoted tea party activist Steve McCoy, of Indianola, as saying “the tea party’s not a Republican arm … there’s no allegiance to Republicans.” It’s a quote McCoy said he continues to stand by.

“But it’s not just Republicans,” McCoy clarified to The Iowa Independent. “Tea party activists are just upset with the direction the country is going, and with both the Republican and Democrat parties.”

Some tea party groups rally for conservative fiscal policies, while others advocate for home schooling rights, and still others champion for immigration reform. In Vander Plaats case, it’s “pro-family” values — specifically one-man, one-woman marriage and anti-abortion advocacy.

“That’s the blessing and the curse of the movement,” Rhodes said. “It’s fairly decentralized. We’re Republicans, we’re Democrats, we have all kinds of people in the tea party movement.”

Such diversity means there is no one person who speaks on behalf of tea party values, nor is the movement unified, unlike the Republican and Democrat parties.

Though often in the spotlight advocating many shared and individual beliefs held by tea party activists, Vander Plaats said Wednesday, “I am not the voice of the tea party in Iowa. There are a lot of threads to the tea party movement; I want to make sure the family thread is represented, and if I can add to that voice or re-energize the movement here in Iowa, then that’s what I want to do.”

Unlike other political parties, which rely on unity to make a stance and influence public policy, tea party members said loose organization is just as effective.

“We’re not a structured party,” McCoy added. “There’s no organizational structure, and I hope that never happens, because then you won’t have a Tea Party group. We’re people who think for ourselves, and we don’t want a (political) party to tell us what to think.”

Rhodes said his Iowa Tea Party is a loosely organized group. The group does not endorse any candidates, or even represent all activists, though it will lend a helping hand to local groups that ask for help in facilitating advocacy efforts on a specific issue.

A bus tour being launched by Rhodes’s Iowa Tea Party in June will give presidential candidates the chance to debate and will serve as a training tool to the public on caucus procedure.

“Our goal is to give people the tools they need to advocate for their issues and to back the candidate of their own choosing,” Rhodes said.

And candidates need not be only Conservative-leaning, Rhodes added.

“Everyone is welcome,” he said. “If a Democrat wants to come debate — I mean, if Barack Obama wanted to come to Iowa and debate issues with us, I’d be OK with that.”

Even if not a unified party, tea party activists believe the movement’s impact will be noticeable come November 2012.

“The tea party will have a significant voice in 2012,“ Vander Plaats said, adding similar movements have already resulted in drastic power change in other elections, primarily one in 2010, when U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was elected to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat. Brown had tea party base support to defeat Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, a Democrat.

Coakley had been believed to be favored to win the seat in heavily-Democratic Massachusetts.

“(Brown) spoke to tea party issues out there, and people rallied behind him,” Vander Plaats said. “Who would have thought he would take Ted Kennedy’s seat?”

Similar action could happen in Iowa, as former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other potential presidential candidates sweep through the state in the coming months. As tea party activism grows from dissatisfaction of the two-party system, candidates will need to reach out, tea party members said.

“Candidates will need to address the tea party’s issues, especially where they stand on ‘Obamacare,’ (and) the role of government,” Vander Plaats said. “When people get a candidate who does that, and think the person can go against Barack Obama, they’ll rally behind that person. We welcome all voices. It’s a vetting process.”

And a diversity of tea party groups and diversity even within the pool of GOP prospects could mean trouble for establishment Conservative presidential hopefuls.

“It’s going to depend on who puts their name out there, but if the Republicans put up another John McCain, I think a lot of people will have a problem with that,” Rhodes added. “

Vander Plaats did not give a name when asked who he would support for President.

“I like different traits in many of them,” he said. “I will be examining their core values carefully.”

Rick Santorum voiced his belief that Iowans are prepared to once again play their critical role in the nation's presidential selection process. (Photo: Lynda Waddington/The Iowa Independent)

“There are a lot of people today who pull out their Constitution and hold it high and say, ‘This is how America should function. These are our constitutional principles.’ And, they are right. That’s the how of America. It’s important. It’s the process. But it is the how, and not the why. The why is in that other document that is also usually in their Constitutional book — the Declaration of Independence,” Santorum told the roughly 80 people gathered at the Clarion hotel.

“America is a moral enterprise. People say, ‘Why do you talk about the moral issues, Senator? Why don’t you just talk about jobs and the economy?’ Because America is not just about jobs and the economy. America is a moral enterprise at its core.”

Philosophers and theologians, he said, had opined for centuries about how man was endowed by his creator with certain inalienable rights, but America was the first country to put such a statement “rooted in Judeo-Christian understanding of our relationship with god” into writing and practice. Although the founding documents don’t come right out and say so, he said, the object of America, the how in the Constitution, was to create a limited government whose sole purpose — “the one thing America is about” — is to keep citizens free.

“Our founders understood that … freedom is not to do what you want to do. Freedom is to do what you ought to do — to serve god, to be your brother’s keeper and to love and support your family,” the Pennsylvania Republican said. “That’s the ‘ought to.’ That’s freedom. That’s liberty. When you hear our founders talk about liberty, that’s what they mean.”

To define freedom as people being allowed to do whatever it is they want to do “to pursue their wants and passions,” he said, would result in anarchy. And, because America’s founders had the foresight and vision to create a nation built on such unprecedented principles, Santorum took particular exception to recent remarks made by Obama that the U.S. became a great nation when it enacted programs to provide for elderly and vulnerable citizens.

“So, it offends me. It upsets me when the President of the United States says that our country was not a great country until people like him, people who believe in government, say that they are going to do things for you,” Santorum said. “That doesn’t make us great. It makes us like every other country in the world where authoritarians believe that they can better provide for you than you can provide for yourself.”

On April 13, during an address on fiscal policy, Obama said:

… Part of this American belief that we’re all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security and dignity. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff may strike any one of us. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we say to ourselves. And so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities. We’re a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments. …

Many conservatives pointed out that all three programs highlighted by Obama were instituted in 1965, and have inferred that Obama was claiming the U.S. was not a great nation until that time.

Santorum also offered Obama some back-handed praise, saying that if it wasn’t for the President’s “radical agenda” citizens might have been content to sit like frogs in a slowly heating pot until they died. The policies being enacted by the Obama administration, he said, have drastically turned up the heat, causing many citizens to realize what was happening before it was too late.

“You know what’s at stake in America today? America is at stake in America — what we are all about, what generations of veterans have fought and died for, the ideals that made us different,” said Santorum.

Calling the upcoming 2012 election the most important since that of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, Santorum pleaded with local activists to do their due diligence in vetting presidential candidates. In addition to selecting a candidate that can win the general election, Republicans also need to be true to their conservative principles, and they need to apply their energy and focus to every federal seat on the upcoming ballot.

“You want conservatives to make big changes in Washington? Then you better get about sending us the horses that can get it done,” he said, noting that during the three times in the past 100 years when Democrats held the White House with a visionary president, controlled the U.S. House and had a super-majority in the U.S. Senate that significant change occurred (such as Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society).

“Has it ever happened that we had a conservative president, a majority of the House and a filibuster-proof U.S. Senate in Republican hands? Answer: never. … So, you want to see some big changes? [In] the U.S. Senate — I served there — if you don’t have 60 votes, you need Democrats to pass almost anything. If America wants to see a big change, it can’t just be electing a president. We have to elect United States senators across this country.”

Santorum visited Cedar Rapids as part of the Iowa GOP Chairman’s Speaker Series. On Monday, Santorum will again be in eastern Iowa when he keynotes an event at the University of Iowa for The Family Leader, a religious conservative organization led by Bob Vander Plaats.

“When you go to even a Burger King or a McDonalds and use your debit card, they’ll ask you to see your ID [to be] sure it’s you,” Zellers said on 95.9 FM’s “Late Debate.” “Should we have to do that when we vote, something that is one of the most sacred — I think it’s a privilege, it’s not a right. Everybody doesn’t get it because if you go to jail or if you commit some heinous crime your rights are taken away. This is a privilege.”

He backed off his statement a bit on Thursday evening: “I understand voting is a right in the Consitution,” Zellers said. “I misspoke. It’s not a privilege.”

Zellers statement mirrors one made by former Sen. Norm Coleman earlier this year at a tea party voter ID conference.

“Some places require an ID to cash a check at McDonald’s; if it’s good enough for McDonald’s it should be good enough for one of the greatest privileges that democracy affords, and that’s the right to vote,” said Coleman.

At the Minnesota Capitol, during hearing on voter ID last month, the right to vote has been compared to many things that are privileges.

“Maybe you can explain to me how we would know how many people were drinking underage if we never ID’d then,” Sen. Ray Vandeveer of Forest Lake said, noting that the same could be said about voting.

In his testimony, Minnesota Majority’s Dan McGrath compared the voting process to banking. “How fast do you think your bank accounts would empty if someone could access your account on the say-so of a friend?” he said, referencing Minnesota system of allowing neighbors to vouch for voters who don’t have IDs.

The Minnesota Voters Alliance’s Andy Cilek said voting with voter ID is the same as boarding an airplane. “I would argue this is no different than taking an airplane,” he said. “How many people would fly on an airplane if we didn’t make sure the people on that plane were who they said they were in the terminal at their destination?”

He added, “I don’t think the right to vote should be taken any less lightly than getting on an airplane.”

Committee chair Vandeveer stated to Katie Conlin of the Minnesota Catholic Conference: “You do need an ID to get cigarettes and to cash a check.”

The Minnesota Catholic Conference, the policy arm of the Catholic Church in Minnesota, opposes voter ID.

“Voting is not privilege, it is a right,” said Katie Conlin. “It’s really not comparable to buying cigarettes or getting on a plane or buying alcohol.”

Here’s what the U.S. Constitution has to say about voting:

The 14th Amendment, Section 2:

But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

The 15th Amendment, Section 1:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

The 19th Amendment:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

The 24th Amendment, Section 1:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.”

The 26th Amendment, Section 1:

“The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.”

The arguments made in the Ghailani case are a good indication of the kinds of claims that the suspected co-conspirators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks may make when their case begins in the same federal courthouse next year. The government’s response in this case similarly reveals how it’s likely to oppose any moves to dismiss the 9/11 cases.

The government’s argument in the Ghailani case can be summed up as: 1) it’s Ghailani’s own fault for being a fugitive before Sept. 11, 2001, while his co-conspirators all got prompt trials in New York; and 2) after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the need for intelligence trumped all, and the speedy trial requirement got thrown out the window.

The way the government explains is it is somewhat more artful. After 9/11, the United States was at war. So Ghailani, who’d previously been charged as a civilian criminal along with other suspects, who were tried and convicted earlier in 2001, was suddenly transformed into a war criminal. And that changed all of the rules.

Given the threat of another major terrorist attack after 9/11, “the Government had shifted dramatically toward intelligence-gathering as the primary means to prevent such an attack.” When Ghailani was captured in 2004, “the defendant was believed to have, and in fact did have, actionable intelligence about al Qaeda — by virtue of his longstanding position in al Qaeda, his assistance to known al Qaeda terrorists” and his alleged ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

Of course, none of these relationships had actually been proven by the time the government captured Ghailani, since he hadn’t had any sort of trial. But the government’s argument is that because he was believed to have information about al-Qaeda, it was justified in detaining him in a CIA prison, and then at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay for another five years.

“In light of these extraordinary circumstances, the Government justifiably opted to initially treat the defendant as an intelligence asset,” the government writes.

The details of Ghailani’s imprisonment and interrogation by the CIA are all redacted in the government’s brief. But in the brief asking the court to dismiss the case, Ghailani’s lawyers argue that he was physically and psychologically abused during two years of overseas CIA imprisonment and interrogations at places where techniques “amounting to torture” had been authorized. Ghailani was also denied the right to a lawyer.

Ghailani was eventually charged in 2008 by the military commissions, but that proceeding was stalled after President Obama took office. Ghailani’s case was transferred to a civilian federal court in May.

“We respectfully submit that this case presents possibly the most unique and egregious example of a speedy trial violation in American jurisprudence to date,” Ghailani’s lawyers wrote in their brief.

The right to a speedy trial derives from the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court, however, said in a 1972 case that judges should weigh several factors in deciding whether the right had been violated, including the length of the delay and its reason, whether the defendant himself was to blame, and whether the delay would prejudice the defendant’s case.

Ghailani’s lawyers have said that their client “appears to be so damaged” by his treatment in U.S. that he may be unable to help his lawyers prepare his defense. They’ve asked the court to have an expert examine the mental state of their client.

Here is the Justice Department’s brief:

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, Ethics, and National Security, tells Warren Richey of the Christian Science Monitor. After all, “we’ve never done this before,” says Silliman.

It’s not even clear what “this” is.

Is the administration going to move all of the men to military custody, or will some be moved to federal civilian custody for trial in a civilian court? The government hasn’t yet said. And will some people be held in military custody indefinitely without trial? The administration hasn’t said that yet, either. So to some extent, the speculation is premature.

What Richey does make clear in his story, however, is that there are some rights that the government will be hard-pressed to argue don’t apply to prisoners on U.S. soil, even if they may not have applied to them at Guantanamo Bay. Those include the Fifth-Amendment right to due process of law, for example, which the government argues doesn’t apply in Cuba. As I’ve explained before, however, what rights the detainees have at the prison in Cuba has never really been decided.

Some defense lawyers even worry, as Richey reports, that their clients will get worse treatment in a beyond-Supermax facility in Illinois than they do at Guantanamo, where the international focus on previous mistreatment has forced improvements.

The fears of Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans notwithstanding, exactly what rights any military detainee in Illinois is going to get will depend a whole lot on the status the government gives them when they’re transferred. And for now, the Obama administration hasn’t yet told us what that will be.

View the details of all Guantanamo detainees’ habeas corpus cases at TWI’s Gitmo Habeas Scoreboard.

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.

The four men — Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al-Harith — were captured in late 2001 in Afghanistan and transferred to Guantanamo in early 2002. They were returned to the United Kingdom in 2004.

Represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Washington, D.C., lawyer Eric Lewis, the four men sued former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and senior military officers for prolonged arbitrary detention, torture, cruel and unusual punishment, and denial of their religious rights. The former prisoners say they were subjected to repeated beatings, sleep deprivation, extremes of hot and cold, forced nakedness, death threats, interrogations at gun point, menacing with unmuzzled dogs, and religious and racial harassment.

As the court notes in its order, the Bill of Attainder clause has only been successfully invoked five times in the Supreme Court since the Constitution was signed. Still, Judge Nina Gershon of the Eastern District of New York ruled that this case may wind up being the sixth.

ACORN and its affiliates, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, “have raised a fundamental issue of separation of powers,” she wrote. “They have been singled out by Congress for punishment that directly and immediately affects their ability to continue to obtain federal funding, in the absence of any judicial, or administrative, process adjudicating guilt. … The public will not suffer harm by allowing the plaintiffs to continue work on contracts duly awarded by federal agencies.”

ACORN and its lawyers claim that Congress voted to cut off funding for the organization, which supports the development of low-income housing and voter registration, as the result of a right-wing public relations campaign against ACORN and others for their efforts to register low-income and largely Democratic voters.

Eventually, the Justice Department did step away from Yoo’s defense — although Yoo’s personal lawyer, former GOP judicial nominee Miguel Estrada, is still being paid by U.S. taxpayers.

Now, despite having already filed briefs on Yoo’s behalf in the district court arguing that as a former DOJ lawyer he should not be held liable for the consequences of his legal advice sanctioning torture, the Justice Department has filed yet another brief in the case, making essentially the same argument, this time on the government’s own behalf.

In an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief filed to the appeals court yesterday (the lower court had refused to dismiss the case), the Justice Department argues that the court should not allow a lawsuit against a government lawyer providing advice to the executive branch where the case implicates national security and war powers. Such liability “could deter frank and full discussions within the Executive Branch regarding such matters.”

Of course, if the executive branch had actually had a “frank and full discussion” about the legality of torture with more than just a couple of hand-picked lawyers who believed in absolute executive power in the first place, John Yoo and the rest of the country wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. But set that aside for a moment.

Footnote 1 of the brief implicitly acknowledges the weird conflict involved in the DOJ’s even filing this brief, though without explicitly noting that the DOJ already made these same arguments on Yoo’s behalf earlier.

The first footnote essentially says that the Justice Department is going to repeat only some of its earlier arguments this time but not others. Specifically, it’s not going to make the argument now that Yoo didn’t do anything wrong because the right not to be tortured wasn’t clear at the time he approved it. That’s because since filing that first brief making just that argument, the department realized that, whoops, Yoo is under an internal ethics investigation, so maybe we should just stay out of this.

Dave Hoffman at Concurring Opinions interprets the footnote this way: “We’d like to join and expand on Yoo’s arguments about his good faith behavior. But other parts of us are still holding onto a report which may call into question the accuracy of that claim. Coincidentally and luckily, that report continues to be delayed, making it unnecessary for us to commit to a position that would be internally incoherent.  Do us a favor and resolve this on constitutional grounds, would ya?”

To be sure, that hasn’t stopped the Justice Department from making the argument elsewhere that torture wasn’t clearly illegal when Yoo sanctioned it. In the case of Rasul v. Rumsfeld, for example, that’s precisely the argument the Obama administration is still making. In fact, as I noted recently, the administration is going even further than that. In a brief recently filed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Obama Justice Department argued that under its own interpretation of the law, there is no constitutional right not to be tortured by U.S. authorities in U.S.-run prisons abroad.