Senate Intelligence Committee Torture Report

Dear Friends,

Since it has not been in the news much lately, you may have forgotten the report done by the Senate Intelligence Committee about the Bush era torture.  The Senate Intelligence Committee voted long ago to release the report, but the Obama Administration is demanding so many redactions that the report loses its impact.  Needless to say, the report shows that the United States engaged in torture. Denis McDonough, the President's chief of staff, has been negotiating the issue with Senate Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee.  He is siding with the CIA in the fight over redactions.  You can read about the most recent negotiations here.  So this issue is not just what some lower level person is doing.  The Chief of Staff to the President of the United States is doing the negotiating.  You cannot get any closer to the President taking the action than having his chief of staff do it.

President Obama has not held any senior person responsible for torturing in our name, a clear violation of both United States and international law.  Why is it that he is so intent on prosecuting Edward Snowden for disclosing the illegal activity of the United States government and not the people who tortured and authorized torture?  Now President Obama is fighting to keep the American public and the world from knowing the full extent of the torture.

There is significant urgency in getting this report released in a form that gives the public a true view of what happened, since once the Republicans take control of the Senate, you can rest assured that there will be no push from the Senate to get the report released.  So I have heard a couple of times lately about how to get the report to the public.  I had forgotten that then Senator Mike Gravel from Alaska called a late night meeting of a subcommittee and read the Pentagon Papers into the record before the Supreme Court refused to block The New York Times from publishing them.  For those of you who were not around or old enough to remember the Pentagon Papers, they were a group of classified documents that demonstrated the our government had lied and covered up incidents in the Vietnam war.

The Constitution gives absolute first amendment free speech rights to sitting members of Congress for things they say on the floor, in committee meetings, etc.  The Supreme Court affirmed that right to protect Senator Gravel who knowingly read classified documents into the public record.  While a Senator or Representative is protected from prosecution outside Congress, he/she can be censured, expelled from Congress, etc.  Of course there is also a lot of peer pressure not to take such an action.

For those of us that want full disclosure of the torturing that our government did, we are hoping that Senator Mark Udall will follow in Senator Mike Gravel's footsteps and read the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture into the public record.  Senator Udall has been a very vocal proponent of full disclosure of the report and was defeated for reelection a couple of weeks ago.  Hence he has the freedom to follow through on his strongly held belief that the report should be disclosed to the public by finding a way to read it into the record.

There is a great article on The Intercept by Dan Froomkin (here) that lays out what Senator Gravel did and what Senator Udall should do.  The article also indicates support for this approach from legal experts including the following quote:

Josh Chafetz, a Cornell Law School [sic], wrote in the Harvard Law Review recently:

[G]iven the extent to which executive branch secrecy determinations are made to advance executive branch interests, there is no reason for Congress to offer automatic deference to those determinations.

And in the current circumstances, he wrote:

[I]f Senators Wyden and Udall have not attempted to invoke the disclosure procedures, then an explanation should be demanded of them. They obviously believe that disturbing information is being withheld, and they obviously are frustrated — a frustration that appears to be shared by members of both parties and both houses — by what they see as a pattern of lies from the executive branch. Where is the Gravelian spirit?

Please join me in telling President Obama (here) to stop blocking meaningful disclosure of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture and also in encouraging Senator Udall (here) to do what Senator Gravel did.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Thank you President Obama

Dear Friends,

I want to thank President Obama for his executive action on immigration.  It certainly does not solve the problem and many families can still be ripped apart by deportation, but it is a great step in the right direction.  This action will certainly be a part of the legacy of President Obama's time in office and in my view a very positive part of his legacy.  Unfortunately, another part of his legacy will be that he was the deporter in chief, having deported more people than any other President.

Nicholas Kristof had an insightful and well balanced op-ed in The New York Times this morning (here) entitled "Immigration Enriches You and Me".  It is certainly worth the time to read and consider it.

Another interesting op-ed piece in The New York Times was by Peter Schuck, a law professor entitled "Why Congress Can Impeach Obama" (here).  He is not arguing that Congress should impeach President Obama.  He argues that impeachment is more a political action than a legal action.  He is also doubtful of the correctness of President Obama's legal position that his executive order on immigration is within his authority.  It is a very interesting article written by someone who supports immigration reform and voted for President Obama twice.  In the end he believes that while impeachment is a political action it should only be used in extreme cases and that President Obama's executive order even if it does exceed his legal authority is not one of those cases.

I have wondered why President Obama does not put forth a detailed legal and political justification for his executive order including a clear analysis of the executive actions of his predecessors (particularly President H.W. Bush and President Reagan).  While it would not make any difference to the Republicans who deep down do not think that he should be President, it is possible that some real news outlets would actually discuss the issue of the extent of the President's authority.  It would be a good debate for this country to have particularly in light of the fact that Congress lets the President wage war and spy on us without authority.

At the risk of offending some of the few readers I have, I want to highlight another article in The New York Times this morning by Juliet Lapidos entitled "Hillary Clinton Takes Sides on Immigration" (here).  I am upset that Secretary Clinton has not taken a position on the XL pipeline.  However, at least on immigration she has taken a position supporting President Obama's action.  The article ends with a sentence that resonates with me as a person who finds it hard to support Secretary Clinton as the next Democratic nominee for President.

But she could have ducked responding to this specific action. The fact that she didn’t suggests that she thinks Republican complaints of “Caesarism” will matter less in two years than immigration advocates’ gratefulness to the Democratic Party.

It is hard for me to get excited about supporting somebody whose positions seem to be determined more by how they will be viewed by the electorate than by what she really believes.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal