Posts by Liliana Segura

Liliana Segura is a writer and activist living in New York

Send Karl Rove to Jail
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on July 18, 2008 at 12:24 PM.

Earlier this afternoon, on the premiere episode of Brave New Films' new show, Meet the Bloggers, I joined Firedoglake's resident Karl Rove expert Marcy Wheeler, along with Baratunde Thurston of Jack and Jill Politics to discuss a question most of us can probably agree on: Should Karl Rove Go to Jail? For so many reasons, I said "yes." But ultimately, the real issue up for discussion was not whether he should be held accountable, it is whether there is any chance on earth he will.

Many others have written intelligently and at length about Karl Rove's recent no-show before the House Judiciary Committee -- most notably Marcy, who has blogged exhaustively on the whole thing. But the short of it is this: The HJC issued a subpoena for Rove back in May. He had until July 10 to appear, to discuss, broadly speaking, his role in the vast politicization of the Department of Justice (which includes the U.S. attorney firings, the illegal hiring practices at the DoJ, and the prosecution of Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.) Instead, Rove had his lawyer send the committee a letter, dated July 1, in which he "respectfully" refused to appear, claiming immunity -- a sort of "executive privilege on steroids" according to one highly reliable source -- and, just to be especially villainous and brazen, skipped town.

Watch this short video for a crash course. The main point? Karl Rove broke the law.

"By ignoring the Judiciary Committee subpoena," House Judiciary Chair John Conyers wrote on Huffington Post, "Karl Rove and the White House once again showed their utter disregard for our system of checks and balances, for Congress as a co-equal branch of government, and ultimately for the American people."

The question that now confronts the Judiciary Committee and, ultimately, the full House of Representatives, is what action to take in the face of such blatant defiance of the rule of law. As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I am considering all options.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Canada to Deport U.S. War Resister Today
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on July 15, 2008 at 11:56 AM.

This is a release from Project Safe Haven.

Today, the minority Conservative government of Canada will achieve one of its long sought goals: the deportation of a U.S. war resister who would not fight in Iraq. Despite polls showing that nearly two-thirds of Canadians want to grant sanctuary to Iraq War refusers, and the passage of a Parliamentary motion that would allow them to immigrate to Canada, the Canadian Border Service Agency in British Columbia will bring war resister Robin Long to the border today and turn him over to U.S. authorities.

Read the story in the Globe & Mail.

"This is a gift from Stephen Harper to George Bush," says Gerry Condon of Project Safe Haven, referring to the conservative heads of state of Canada and the U.S. "And it is a gift to the headline writers, who will trumpet that Canada is no longer a safe haven for AWOL GIs.

"But it is an illusion," says Condon, "because this is not the first of many deportations. It may be the first and the last. A minority government that ignores the will of its people and its Parliament will not be allowed to rule much longer." Federal elections are expected to take place in Canada this fall.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Cops Acquitted in 50-Bullet Killing of Unarmed Black Man on His Wedding Day
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on April 25, 2008 at 1:45 PM.

This morning in New York, three police detectives were found "not guilty" in the murder of Sean Bell, a 23-year old African-American man who was shot to death on his wedding day, November 25, 2006. His death sparked outrage in a city that is no stranger to police brutality; the list of police killings of unarmed black men over the years is long and familiar.

But the details in this case were grotesque. Fifty shots were fired at Bell and his friends, who were celebrating his bachelor party at a Queens strip club; one of the plainclothes officers -- himself responsible for 31 shots -- stopped to re-load.

Bell died after being hit four times in the neck and torso. But not before being handcuffed.

"Mr. Bell, mortally wounded and not speaking, and Joseph Guzman, despite wounds from his head to his feet, were put in handcuffs after the gunfire ceased," the New York Times reported. The case was shocking enough to elicit a strong response from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who called the shooting "inexplicable" and "unacceptable."

Of the five police officers involved in the shooting, three would be indicted by a grand jury. When it came to the trial, the defense opted for a judge rather than a jury, after attempting, unsuccessfully, to get the venue moved out of Queens. "Eighty-three percent of black potential jurors think the shooting was unjustified," defense attorneys argued. "Many have already decided that there is nothing more to consider and that the police are necessarily guilty of some crime."

As CNN aired images of the scene following the verdict this morning, it was not hard to see why. The anger and the pain on the faces of those gathered outside the courtroom spoke to years of seeing sons, brothers, and husbands brutalized by law enforcement officers apparently programmed to see black bodies as dispensable.

"There's no evidence that race had anything to do with it," Mayor Bloomberg concluded in November 2006. Really? Did race also have nothing to do with the case of Khiel Coppin? Timothy Stansbury? Amadou Diallo?

As much as people like to treat police shootings as "tragic" isolated incidents, the reality is that police officers inflict violence on black communities on a regular basis. And they get away with it -- again and again and again.

Reporters this morning took pains to remind viewers that for the police officers involved, their lives were forever changed. "With this case there's no winners, there's no losers," said the president of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association. Spare us. Bell had two young daughters with his fiancée, Nicole, who took his name to honor her would-be husband's memory. This morning, she fled the courtroom immediately after the verdict was read.

"I think it's not right, because they shot him 50 times," said one young man named Kamau, who came to the courthouse with his dad. "They knew he was hurt, and they kept shooting him. He didn't even have a gun."

U.S. Gov't to Re-Try Suspects in So-Called Sears Tower Plot. Again.
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on April 24, 2008 at 11:00 AM.

Last week, a Florida judge declared a mistrial in the case of six men accused of a terrorist plot to blow up the Sears Tower. The federal jury could not decide whether Patrick Abraham, Burson Augustine, Rothschild Augustine, Stanley Grant Phanor, Naudimar Herrera and Narseal Batiste (their seemingly delusional leader, who, among other quirks, had a reputation for wandering the streets in a bathrobe), were, as prosecutors claimed, engaged in a coordinated plot to wage a "ground war" on American soil.

It is not the first time this has happened. Last week marked the second time that the feds have tried and failed to convince a jury that the defendants are would-be terrorists guilty of, well, something. Which is pretty embarrassing if you're the White House or the Department of Justice. As the Washington Post reports, the Bush administration "had touted the case as an example of the government's ability to prevent terrorist attacks."

But from the start, the government's case against the men -- all but one of whom are in their 20s and previously known as the "Liberty City Seven" (one man has been found innocent) -- seemed a bit ... hasty. MSNBC reported in October:

FBI audio and video recordings show that the so-called "Liberty City Seven" hoped to use street gangs as soldiers who would stage attacks, ranging from large-scale bombings of major buildings to poisoning salt shakers in restaurants, Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Gregorie said.

Despite their wild claims of domestic destruction, the men did not get very far. As David Cole pointed out last fall, the defendant's so-called terrorist plot did not seem to stretch beyond ordering combat boots. Also: "Their only Al Qaeda 'connection' was to a federal informant pretending to be Al Qaeda."

So, after two high-profile prosecutorial failures, now might be a good time for the government to cut its losses and turn its attention to other cases in the ongoing "war on terror." Right?

Wrong.

As it turns out, when it comes to pre-emptive terror prosecutions based on dubious evidence, the Bush administration believes the third time's the charm. Yesterday the DoJ announced: "The United States has decided it's necessary to proceed … one more time."

It's an unprecedented situation. "Having two juries deadlocked over the same case has never happened in a major terrorism prosecution," reports the LA Times.

The two trials have cost several million dollars, including fees for court-appointed defense lawyers and prosecutors' salaries. Providing security for the two trials has cost more than $1 million, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

"Enough is enough," said defense lawyer David O. Markus. "The feds are always saying that they don't have enough resources, so why are they clinging to this money-draining case?"

Good question. Looks like we'll find out later this year. In the meantime, no reason to be surprised. Turning politically-driven missions into costly failures is what the Bush administration does best.

"A Big Promotion" for General Petraeus
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on April 23, 2008 at 8:48 AM.

In a press conference this morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that General David Petraeus will be replacing Admiral William Fallon to become the head of U.S. Central Command, or Centcom, which oversees military activity throughout the Middle East.

It is a "major promotion" in the words of several CNN pundits, for the man currently leading our wildly successful mission in Iraq.

Fallon, who resigned abruptly in March after Esquire quoted him saying that he was opposed to military aggression against Iran, had a notoriously bad relationship with Petraeus; at one point last March Fallon allegedly called him "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and said "I hate people like that." ("Bad relations?" one official told the Washington Post in September, "That's the understatement of the century.") The acrimony between the two had much to do with opposing ideas about how to move forward in Iraq -- but that conflict has clearly been resolved, what with the success of the surge and all.

Petraeus's nomination must be approved by the Senate -- a forgone conclusion -- after which he will be in charge, not only of the U.S.'s broader mission in Iraq (whatever that is), but the war in Afghanistan too. Because you know, if he can bring the magic of the surge to Afghanistan, democracy is as good as formed.

According to the Associated Press, "Gates said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other problems in the Central Command area of responsibility, demand knowledge of how to fight counterinsurgencies as well as other unconventional conflicts."

"I don't know anybody in the U.S. military better qualified to lead that effort," Gates said.

Be afraid.

(The AP has more.)

"The Angola 3": Ex-Black Panthers Kept in Solitary Confinement for Over Three Decades [VIDEO]
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on March 19, 2008 at 12:00 PM.

In the scheme of human rights and the U.S. criminal justice system, the case of the "Angola 3" is one of the great injustices of our time. In 1972, three black men, Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, and Robert King Wilkerson, were prisoners at Angola State Prison in Louisiana when a guard was stabbed to death. The three Black Panthers were blamed for the murder on the flimsiest of proof and placed in solitary confinement. They would stay there for the next three decades, quite possibly the longest span of time any prisoner has spent in solitary confinement in the U.S.

At Angola, a sprawling complex that was once a slave plantation, solitary confinement means living in a 6-by-9 cell, 23 hours a day, seven days a week. It is an extreme punishment that is physically and psychologically dehumanizing. "The SPCA would shut this prison down if they had dogs up here like this," Herman Wallace says.

Angola has always had a reputation for racism and brutality, and the case of the Angola 3 has its own sordid back story. In the early 1970s, prisoners were, according to the Times-Picayune, "subject to being 'sold' to each other to be used as 'sex slaves' or prostituted out to other inmates in exchange for prison-brands of currency, such as cigarettes." The warden in those years -- a man who would later be jailed for trying to murder his wife -- acknowledged the existence of the sex trade in his memoir. According to the New Orleans-based defense attorney who continues to advocate for the Angola 3, the three Black Panthers had been "trying to stop the sexual slavery and rampant rage occurring there everyday." But organizing of any kind is frowned upon in a racist prison environment. In a very real way, the Angola 3 can be considered political prisoners.

The case of the Angola Three is legendary among prison activists, but the media has ignored it for decades, making any hope for justice elusive. In 2001, however, one of the Angola 3, Robert King Wilkerson finally won his freedom. All told, he spent 29 years in solitary confinement, an experience he calls "a nightmare." "I saw men so desperate that they ripped prison doors apart, starved and mutilated themselves. It takes every scrap of humanity to stay focused and sane in this environment."

Woodfox and Wallace are still behind bars. Last April, they marked 35 years in solitary confinement. Their incarceration is the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment. Enough is enough.

Winter Soldier: "This Isn't Just Some Isolated Incident"
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on March 15, 2008 at 10:15 AM.

If there's a common thread between Friday's panels and this morning's panels at the Winter Soldier hearings, it's the dreadful knowledge that, for all the stories told, there are many, many more.

"We're really packing ten panels into this," said one speaker named Jeff Key, an openly gay veteran from Alabama, at a session on gender and sexuality in the military. "... I wanna say something that makes a difference." But with only a few minutes to recount their experiences -- or those of other people -- there's only so much they can say. Bringing together stories of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault, the panelists take deep breaths and apologize for only sharing a fraction of what they know.

"I'm not going to talk about every degrading and humiliating incident," said a veteran named Patty McCann. In truth, "I could talk for hours about that stuff." For a shocking number of female -- and some male -- veterans, "that stuff" includes rape -- at the hands of military superiors, from U.S. recruiters in the States to commanding officers in Iraq.

The Winter Soldier hearings are bringing home these and other rarely told stories of the war. With some 200 veterans arriving at a small college campus miles from the Capitol, it is an overwhelming gathering of people with incredible tales to tell; survivors who bear the scars and drive home the human cost of the war.

Others have set the scene, so it is perhaps unnecessary to describe the intense security, the rules of conduct, the small group of flag-wielding protesters who stood at the entrance of the National Labor College yesterday to intimidate and jeer at those taking part in what is, in a very real sense, a truth commission.

But those who might have been intimidated before will no longer be silenced. "I kept silent a lot when I felt like I should have spoken," Key said. "If I had said what I had on my mind," said another veteran named Joe Wheeler, " I would have been court-martialled."

Yet story after grisly story -- of violence against innocent civilians, of the macabre celebrations that followed such violence; after hearing grown men weep over things they did, and veteran after veteran apologize to the Iraqi people for the atrocities committed against them, the injustice of such misplaced priorities is palpable.

There's a strong focus here on the dehumanizing effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the soldiers and on those they point their weapons upon. "Every veteran knows that the first person to become dehumanized is the soldier himself," said one speaker. Too many stories -- of being ordered to shoot women, children, of shooting dogs out of boredom when there were no people to kill -- have driven home the point. Pictures too. A photograph of part of a dead Iraqi man's face peeled onto a soldier's Kevlar helmet comes to mind.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Mr. Mukasey Goes to Guantánamo
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on February 27, 2008 at 12:00 PM.

Blink and you'll miss it: At this very moment, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is visiting Guantanamo Bay.

The Associated Press reports:

A Justice Department spokesman says the attorney general arrived Wednesday morning and is expected to spend about six hours at the Naval station.

Peter Carr says the visit will give Mukasey a chance to see first hand the detention facility and to sit down with officials who are involved in military commission hearings for suspected terrorists.

Now, six hours isn't a very long time -- CNN says five hours -- and no word from the D.O.J. on whether the AG will voluntarily undergo a Gitmo-style "enhanced interrogation" for a total immersion experience. (Would that he might, so that we the people might know once in for all whether waterboarding is torture.) Regardless, Mukasey's previously unannounced Cuban jaunt comes at an auspicious moment: mere weeks after the announcement of potential death penalty charges against six detainees -- and following the resignation of Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes, who, in a moment of poorly-considered candor, apparently told a Gitmo prosecutor that the military tribunals were to be rigged. ("We can't have acquittals, we have to have convictions," Haynes told Col. Morris Davis.)

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Where's the Debate Over Gun Control?
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on February 22, 2008 at 1:10 PM.

The campus shooting at Northern Illinois University may be old news by now, but forgive me for thinking it might have presented an opportunity at last night's debate for someone to ask Hillary or Obama about gun control. Can you remember the last time either candidate talked about it? The last time any Democratic presidential contender did? Thinking "Dems" and "guns" leaves me with images of John Kerry in a hunting outfit. Embarrassing.

Gun control used to be one of those bread and butter issues for Democrats, but recent years have seen the party's rapid evolution towards staunch protectors of the 2nd Amendement. When the Clinton-era assault weapons ban passed expired three years back, few in Congress leaped to renew it. The results have been deadly: As the Brady Campaign's Paul Helmke points out: "One thing the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University shooters had in common was that they both used high capacity ammunition magazines that would have been prohibited under the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that expired in 2004."

Of course, easing up on gun control has been critical to the Dems courting voters in Western and Southwestern swing states; the more Democratic candidates have traded gun bans for wishy-washy pro-regulation positions, the more the NRA has rewarded them, upping their political contributions to the Dems. ''Certainly, we support more Republicans than Democrats," a public affairs director told the Boston Globe in 2005, "but we've seen in the last few years an increasing number of Democrats actively seeking the NRA endorsement and actually winning it."

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Google Censors a Site That Exposes United Nations Corruption
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on February 20, 2008 at 3:08 PM.

Anyone on the U.N. corruption beat in the past couple years has likely come across Inner City Press, a no-frills United Nations-focused news site that happens to be "the most effective and important media organization for U.N. whistleblowers," according to Bea Edwards of the Government Accountability Project (GAP). Since December 2005, Inner City Press has run stories spotlighting wrongdoing and malfeasance within the United Nations Development Program, from Turkey to West Africa to North Korea.

Inner City Press has filled an important niche: "Current whistleblower protections at the U.N. are grossly inadequate," according to GAP. With would-be whistleblowers vulnerable to retaliation, the news site has "reported the arcane tactics of silencing the free speech of employees of conscience in the U.N. system."

Now, it looks like Inner City Press itself is the subject of retaliation -- and not, at first glance, by the U.N. Instead, the site has been buried by the very search engine that has driven traffic to it for more than two years: Google News.

Earlier this month, editor-in-chief Matthew Lee received an ominous message on behalf of Google:

"We periodically review news sources, particularly following user complaints, to ensure Google News offers a high quality experience for our users … When we reviewed your site we've found that we can no longer include it in Google News."

Are "user complaints" coming from the U.N.?

Surprise: FOX News is on the trail:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Lingerie Designer Releases Gitmo Inspired Underwear: "Fair Trial My A***"
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on February 15, 2008 at 10:09 AM.

There's not much room for humor when it comes to Guantanamo, but human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith's "Case of the Contraband Underpants," published in The New Statesman last fall, had to make you chuckle.

I received a letter from an officer at [Guantanamo] suggesting that I might have smuggled some underwear in to my client, the British resident Shaker Aamer. Apparently Shaker had been "recently discovered to be wearing Under Armour briefs and a Speedo bathing suit." It seems he was wearing both contraband items in his cell at Camp Echo, where he has been in total isolation almost continuously since 24 September 2005, with only the flush of his steel toilet for company.

The odd discovery led the attorney on a fact-finding mission, in which he would learn that "Under Armour" underwear is "popular with the US military," making it more than likely that the illicit skivvies were planted by someone in uniform. (The Speedo suit was more mysterious; perhaps, Stafford Smith suggested, "the military could erect prohibitory signs in each prison cell: 'We don't pee in your swimming pool, so please don't swim in our toilet'"?)

Now, months later and right in time for London's Fashion Week, Stafford Smith and his UK-based legal charity, Reprieve, have inspired a line of underwear, Gitmo-orange and with the words "Fair Trial My Arse" emblazoned on the butt. Created by famed lingerie designer Agent Provocateur, the underwear has had an auspicious debut: a pair was "discreetly delivered" yesterday to Prime Minister Gordon Brown -- a Valentine's Day gift from Reprieve and its clients -- and another was spotted on the runway as part of the Vivienne Westwood collection at London's Fashion Week.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Romney Endorses McCain: Was it His Pro-Torture Vote?
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on February 14, 2008 at 1:55 PM.

News is nigh that former presidential candidate, Mitt "I'd double Gitmo" Romney, is endorsing John McCain. Given the acrimony of their rivalry on the campaign trail a few weeks back, this is somewhat surprising. But then, yesterday McCain cast a vote that must have made Mitt want to send the elderly statesman a valentine.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were too busy campaigning to attend yesterday's Senate vote to ban waterboarding. But John McCain was there. And despite the fact that he has long stood out among his fellow Republicans in his vocal condemnations of torture, McCain dug deep and found his inner GOP candidate -- and voted "Nay" to a law that would outlaw waterboarding and other "harsh interrogation tactics."

The bill in question -- which passed the Senate 51 to 45 but faces a Bush veto -- limits CIA interrogators to "19 less-aggressive interrogation tactics," as specified by a U.S. Army Field Manual. The manual specifies eight techniques as forbidden, including: waterboarding, mock executions, use of beatings and electric shocks, forced nakedness and sexual acts, and causing hypothermia or heat injuries.

One would think that the man who sponsored the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act -- and who invokes his experience as a POW almost as often as Giuliani said "9/11" -- could get behind such legislation. Instead, McCain issued a 12-paragraph statement explaining why, when presented with the chance to hold the CIA to the standards outlined in the army field manual, he "cannot support such a step."

His explanation was, predictably, tortured. But he ended with a flourish:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Bush Administration Tries to "Cleanse" Evidence Obtained Through Torture
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on February 12, 2008 at 12:17 PM.

Timing is everything. Yesterday the Pentagon announced that it will seek the death penalty against six men accused of masterminding the terrorist attacks of September 11th. Arriving at the heels of CIA Director Michael Hayden's admission last week that three detainees at Gitmo -- including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is among the defendants -- were waterboarded, the announcement sparked immediate questions about the viability of the evidence against the defendants, who are said to have undergone other forms of "harsh interrogation." As one reporter asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino: "Is the White House at all concerned that some of the evidence of the confessions by many of these men may not be admissible because they were obtained through waterboarding, which the administration admitted to last week?"

Perino skirted the question, but I would guess 'no.' That's because the Pentagon has deployed a novel strategy to legitimize the process and make it respectable again: take defendants imprisoned in an endless legal limbo and whose confessions have been tortured out of them and interrogate them again, this time asking nicely and without violence, to obtain the same evidence. A few months later, voila: You have a clean trial.

The Washington Post explains:

"FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the 'Clean Team' and set as their goal the collection of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons.

"To ensure that the data would not be tainted by allegations of torture or illegal coercion, the FBI and military team won the suspects' trust over the past 16 months by using time-tested rapport-building techniques, the officials said."

One official described the tactic:

"[Interrogators] went in and said that they'd love to talk to them, that they knew what the men had been through, and that none of that stuff was going to be done to them … It was made very clear to them that they were in a very different environment, that they were not with the CIA anymore."

The Post -- which also pointed out that the prisoners were fed "whenever they were hungry" and given Starbucks coffee -- concedes that it remains unclear "whether the FBI and military interrogators could have extracted the same information without a road map from the CIA indicating what they might say."

"It also remains unknowable whether the detainees would have responded to a friendly approach without first receiving more aggressive treatment."

That's not all that's unclear:

"It is not clear whether the government will apply civilian rules holding that death penalty cases are to be treated with extraordinary care," reports the New York Times, "or how a death penalty might be carried out, or where. It is not even clear how much of the proceedings may take place in sealed courtrooms. "

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Bush Goes After FOIA
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on February 7, 2008 at 5:28 AM.

Remember that time the Office of Drug Control Policy told a student that it would take 200 years to file his FOIA request?

"Please note that the General Counsel is predisposed," the letter read. "Consequently, we must enlarge to June 22, 2207 the time provided for his final determination." (Or as Wonkette put it: "ODCP Promises to Get Back to You in the Far Future, If Man is Still Alive.")

Okay, chances are it was a typo, but that doesn't mean the U.S. government is not notoriously slow in responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. A recent overview of overdue FOIA requests by the National Security Archive found "at least four cases where the delay was for more than 15 years," according to the Washington Post.

So, it was a good thing when legislation passed late last year titled the Open Government Act of 2007, which decreed that government agencies that receive FOIA requests must provide requested information in 20 days or less, or else pay a fine. Right? And it was a good thing to create an ombudsman position to monitor things and ensure that the law is followed. Right?

Not if you're President Bush.

Today's Washington Post reveals that, buried in the president's new budget request, is a plan to yank the brand new ombudsman position from the National Archives and Records Administration, and place it in the Department of Justice.

Conflict of interest?

Yes:

"Because the ombudsman would be the chief monitor of compliance with the new law, that move is akin to killing the critical function, some members of Congress and watchdog groups say."

"Justice represents the agencies when they're sued over FOIA. . . . It doesn't make a lot of sense for them to be the mediator," said Kristin Adair, staff counsel at the National Security Archive, which is suing the White House to force it to preserve e-mails the administration says it may have lost.

Patrick Leahy's work is never done:

"Once again, the White House has shown they intend to act contrary to the intent of Congress," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. "I will continue to work through the appropriations process to make sure that the National Archives and Records Administration has the necessary resources and funds to comply with the OPEN Government Act, and we will continue to work in Congress to make necessary reforms to the Freedom of Information Act."

One of our best recourses for combating government secrecy, FOIA requests serve a critical function. The Freedom of Information Act, which passed in 1966, "provides that any person has the right to request access to federal agency records or information. All agencies of the U.S. Government are required to disclose records upon receiving a written request."

It's no surprise this president would be hostile to such legislation.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Judge Reprimanded for Calling Three Black Female Lawyers "The Supremes"
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on February 6, 2008 at 12:14 PM.

Here's a charming local story you might have missed: a county judge calls three black female public defenders "the Supremes" in court and tells their client he'd be better off with "an experienced male attorney."

The Associated Press reported last week that Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone "has acknowledged that his comments suggested racial and sexual bias," but insists that he meant no harm: "In his written response to a complaint, Boone said he was trying to protect the three public defenders from representing a difficult defendant."

And they say chivalry is dead.

The Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities -- are sexism and racism disabilities? -- concluded that Boone's remarks were "undignified and disparaging" and the judge has recused himself from the case.

More sordid details here.