Civil Rights

By David Swanson

We're about to witness the pretense of war lawyer hearings without the war lawyers (commonly known as torture lawyers by those willing to ignore their role in "legalizing" aggressive war). This may highlight for many observers the little-known fact that Congress no longer has the power of subpoena.

During 2007-2008 Democratic congressional committees subpoenaed dozens of Bush officials, who simply refused to comply. Although any committee has the undisputed power to use the Capitol Police to enforce its subpoenas, none did. They asked the Bush Justice Department to do it. They sued the Bush Justice Department in court. But, with the exception of a weird deal for partial and secret compliance by Karl Rove in 2009, not a single one of the scofflaws has been compelled to show up. » read more »

Walking through Charlottesville, Va., on Tuesday I saw a sight that is increasingly common in the United States: men in prison uniforms, watched by guards, out working in public, in this case shoveling snow. I asked them if they were being paid for their work, and they just laughed.

A short while later I ran into a city official who was clearly familiar with the prisoner snow-shoveling program. He told me it was nothing new, part of "work release," gave the prisoners a chance to get outside, and that the prisoners were paid.

I pointed out that when asked if they were paid they laughed at me.

Then this official explained that he meant they were paid about 25 cents an hour.

My response was to suggest that 25 cents an hour sounded more like a cover to avoid accusations of slavery than actual pay for people's labor. And weren't there people in need of living-wage jobs who could shovel sidewalks, and who would -- with such jobs -- stand a better chance of themselves staying out of jail? Wasn't there a danger in making it economically advantageous to certain parties to keep a large supply of 25-cent-an-hour laborers on hand by locking a sufficient number of people up in jail?

I'm not advocating denying prisoners a breath of fresh air. I'm advocating against entrenching further our uniquely American system of locking so many people up in the first place.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny"

These words are the foundation of Dr. King's concept of "Beloved Community." On January 18, people across the country will come together to improve lives, bridge social barriers, and move our nation closer to the "Beloved Community" that Dr. King envisioned.

Find out more about the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service » read more »

An organization of attorneys, journalists, and advocates today filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act requesting the long-suppressed report from the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) regarding the conduct of President Bush's top lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel who authored memos purporting to authorize torture and aggressive war.

The request, reproduced below along with a transmittal letter, asks for the OPR report that has long been promised by Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as an earlier OPR report completed during the last months of the Bush administration. The request also seeks the 10 page rebuttal of the 2008 report by then- Attorney General Michael Mukasey. » read more »

John Yoo at UVA
By David Swanson

Noted war criminal and torture lawyer John Yoo is scheduled to speak at UVA law school on March 19, 2010.

The day we go into year eight in the illegal occupation of Iraq that Yoo and Jay Bybee provided "legal" justification for, this "legalizer" of torture and other war crimes will be speaking at a law school, our law school, in our town.

John Yoo is a Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California. I've joined in protests at his home at 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley.

He is a lawyer with the Pennsylvania bar from which he should be disbarred and would be if enough people demanded it. Support: DisbarTortureLawyers.org.

Yoo counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote this memo promoting presidential power to launch aggressive war, and claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of war, and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result.

Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone's child.

Yoo has been confronted in his classroom: video, and again confronted in the classroom.

He should not imagine he can seek shelter from protests of his open criminality by coming to lecture at the University of Virginia.

Yoo this week told the New York Times that he had worked, not for the law, but for his "client" the president, and that he had no regrets about pretending to legalize torture.

Let's change that.

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PS: The next day, March 20, I'll be speaking on a panel at the Va Festival of the Book.