Where’s the Outrage?

From the House of Representatives floor, a couple of minutes ago. Lessons the White House should have learned.

Tags: Bush Administration, Domestic Issues, Fun, House of Representatives by ecthompson
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What’s the deal with these guys?  I just don’t get it.  This is like the mafia.  Win at all costs.  There is no time where you can admit that you were wrong.  Never. 

Senator Graham of South Carolina and Senator Kyl of Colorado, both R’s, filed a lie with the Supreme Court in an attempt to influence the Hamdan decision.  These guys inserted testimony into the Congressional record after the fact. This does happen from time to time so it is not that unusual. The twist is that they then gave the testimony to the Supreme Court in order to argue that the Senate had are ready discussed this case in conjunction with the Detainee Treatment Act. Therefore, the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over this case and the legislative branch of the government did. Thankfully, the Supreme Court rejected this argument.  But here’s the problem, these guys tried to hoodwink the Supreme Court.  This wasn’t through skillful lawyering but instead through lying.  How can this be acceptable behavior for a United States senator?

John Dean, former White House counsel to President Nixon, has the whole story.

Senators Kyl and Graham’s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Scam: The Deceptive Amicus Brief They Filed in the Guantanamo Detainee Case
By JOHN W. DEAN
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Last week, the Supreme Court issued its historic decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. There, it dealt a substantial blow to the Bush/Cheney Administration’s plans for the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo and, potentially, elsewhere as well - ruling out, for instance, the option of using military commissions without due process to try detainees.The decision itself has been widely discussed. Less widely discussed, however, has been its backstory.The Bush/Cheney Administration has been doing everything possible to keep its treatment of purported terrorist detainees out of the federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court. To assist the Administration, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jon Kyl of Arizona engaged in a blatant scam that was revealed during the briefing of Hamdan.Senators Graham and Kyl not only misled their Senate colleagues, but also shamed their high offices by trying to deliberately mislead the U.S. Supreme Court. Their effort failed. I have not seen so blatant a ploy, or abuse of power, since Nixon’s reign.

To understand their ruse, a bit of background information about both the Hamdan case and the Detainee Treatment Act is necessary.
[Read more →]

Tags: Al Qaeda, Supreme court, Terrorism by ecthompson
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