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November 19, 2009 FOX News

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November 18, 2009 C-SPAN

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November 18, 2009 C-SPAN Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing
Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice

From Air America's blog--Al Franken Takes On Eric Holder Over Rape Kit Backlogs:

But Franken, staying true to his welcome focus on women's issues, asked Holder what Justice is doing about the immense backlog of untested rape kits, which can often yield DNA evidence that allows the police and prosecutors to close cases. Congress provided money under the Debbie Smith Rape Kit Backlog Reduction Act in 2004 and 2008 to reduce those backlogs, but there is no reliable database of how many rape kits haven't been tested and major backlogs remain in many errors.

And from Sen. Franken--Remarks By Sen. Franken to the Innocence Project:

The work of the Innocence Project has already led to 245 post-conviction DNA exonerations. And in four out of every ten of those exonerated, DNA testing identified the actual perpetrator.

When you consider that you’ve only looked at a small subset of all of the cases out there, the conclusion is pretty clear: there are innocent people in prison and on death row, and guilty people walking the streets.

The former should weigh heavy on our conscience. Both should be a cause for concern… and action.

Some people think efforts to exonerate the wrongly convicted are somehow soft on crime. I think it’s just the opposite – your efforts are not just morally right, they’re tactically smart – they help us ensure that innocent people are not wrongly incarcerated while the actual perpetrators walk free to commit more crimes.

There’s a lot of debate in progressive circles about what has changed under the Obama administration, and what hasn’t. But one thing has certainly changed: We have a government that believes in science once again.

Believing in science means acting on what the science tells you.

So what does the science tell us when it comes to crime?

Well, this February, the National Academy of Sciences released their comprehensive, two-year review of forensic science in use throughout American crime labs.

They concluded, and I’m quoting:

“Many forensic tests… have never been exposed to stringent scientific scrutiny. With the exception of nuclear DNA analysis… no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source.”

I participated in the hearing where those findings were released, and as we questioned witnesses, what became clear is that there have been many false convictions based on improper, or at best ineffective, forensic techniques.

And that tells us we need to reassess how our criminal justice system does business.

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Heather: As Megan Carpenter noted Sen. Franken pressed A.G. Eric Holder about the number of non-violent offenders incarcerated in America every year and stayed true to form with caring about women's issues. Everyone from Minnesota should be very proud to have Al Franken as their Senator with the good work he's doing.

November 18, 2009 C-SPAN
Senator Kyl questions Attorney General Holder on trials of alleged 9/11 plotters.

November 13, 2009 PBS News Hour

Part 1

Part 2

(Suzanne Ito writes for and manages Blog of Rights, the blog of the national ACLU.)

June 26 of this year marked the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, and the anniversary of the United Nations' Convention Against Torture. On that day, the ACLU joined countless other human rights groups in calling for Accountability for Torture. We asked people to send Attorney General Eric Holder the Office of Legal Counsel memos—the actual evidence released through ACLU lawsuits that revealed the fact that high-level Bush administration officials had sanctioned these illegal acts—and urged him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate these crimes.

We were pleased when Newsweek's Daniel Klaidman reported that Holder was indeed considering an investigation. But now a month has passed, we haven't heard much from the Justice Department. So last week, the ACLU renewed its call for accountability by launching a new video, featuring director Oliver Stone, composer Philip Glass, Rosie Perez, and many others reading from the torture memos, and calling for accountability.

The public knows that detainees were tortured during the Bush presidency. From the photos from Abu Ghraib, to congressional reports (PDF), to the torture memos themselves, it's crystal-clear that these abusive interrogation practices were authorized by the highest levels of the Bush administration. Even Dick Cheney couldn't resist a little cheerleading about how effective he thought waterboarding was.

It is a core premise of American democracy that no one—not even the president—is above the law. When we hear Attorney General Holder is considering only investigating those who carried out the torture, not those who authorized the torture in the first place, it sickens us to think how this clashes with the most fundamental American ideals of fairness. Too much evidence of high-level orders exists to limit criminal investigations to "a few bad apples." We cannot compromise the rule of law because we're afraid the outcome might be politically messy, inconvenient or even painful. To not investigate is to tell future presidents and their administrations that they're above the law, and that would render our system of justice meaningless.

So please watch the video, and send it to Attorney General Holder. It's time for a comprehensive investigation of the Bush era torture policies.

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July 29, 2009 ABC Nightline

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There's just so much garbage in this clip, it's hard to sort it all out. But garbage it is and sort we must. I think that it's instructive to remember as we wade through this textbook example of fallacious logic that Newt Gingrich is considered the great scholar of the GOP. No wonder the GOP doesn't seem able to think their way out of the tea bag they put themselves in.

Still holding the talking points given to him by the Bush administration's Revisionist History Tour™, Newtie tries to muddy the waters by simultaneously claiming that the Clinton and Obama administrations did or do not take the War on Terror™ as seriously as the Bush administration, but also find that the tactics used by the Bush administration in their pursuit of against terrorism are so acceptable that they haven't tried outlawing them yet. HUH????

(S)ince 1993 when seven people were killed at the World Trade Center, we’ve had two cycles. We had a Clinton administration that thought this was a criminal problem, that issued -- that refused to allow the CIA and the FBI to cooperate, that refused to pressure Saudi Arabia or Yemen to go after people who were killing our folks. And then you had a Bush administration that said this is a war.

Hmm...interesting revisionism. Let's recall, Newtie, that the Clinton administration actually caught and prosecuted the "blind sheik" responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing, unlike the Bush administration, who declared war on a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and killed millions of Iraqis but left Osama Bin Laden uncaught. That's a successful strategy, innit?

WALLACE: I want to ask you about one other aspect of this. Pelosi says even if she was briefed on this that there was nothing she could do because these were classified briefings. She and the Republican chairman of the committee got this information. There’s nothing they could do.

You as House speaker received these kinds of briefings back in the ‘90s. If you objected to a secret operation, was there something you could do?

GINGRICH: Sure. I mean, the first thing you do is call the president and tell him you will feel compelled to pass a law cutting off the money. I mean, there are lots of things you can do if you want to do it. The Congress is pretty powerful if it wants to be.

And second, you know, they’ve had control since January of 2007. They haven’t passed a law making waterboarding illegal. They haven’t gone into any of these things and changed law. In fact, they’ve had several -- they -- recently, you find that Attorney General Holder’s own Justice Department is saying, “Well, you know, some of these memos are actually right. They’re not wrong.”

Um, Newt? You do know that waterboarding is already illegal, don't you? Oh great historian of the GOP, can you tell me what happened to those Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American GIs during WWII? So Congress should make waterboarding illegal again otherwise they condone the act? Astonishing lack of logic there.

So this is -- what we’re seeing now in a very sad way is as bitter a partisan attack on the Bush people as we’ve seen since the McCarthy era. The degree that they’re putting specific people at risk for criminal prosecution is unprecedented in modern America.

Never let be said that today's GOP isn't the most persecuted bunch of privileged white folk in the history of mankind. Jeez. Here's another way to look at it, Newt: Specific people are at risk for criminal prosecution because of THEIR UNPRECEDENTED CRIMINAL ACTS. "Rule of Law" party, my aunt Fanny.

Which brings me to my final point, the implied slur against AG Eric Holder for his firm's representation of Yemeni detainees at Gitmo. Somehow this is siding with terrorists to actually respect our legal system. While Holder himself did not actually work on those Gitmo cases, the fact remains--and I'm sure that this comes as a shock to Gingrich--but not all attorneys think their clients are innocent. They are just interested in making sure that justice is served by a fair trial.

Obviously, the concepts of fairness and justice are alien to Gingrich.

Transcripts (courtesy of CQ Politics) below the fold

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May 04, 2009 News Corp

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President Obama today:

On the one hand, we have very real enemies out there. And we rely on some very courageous people -- not just in our military, but also in the Central Intelligence Agency -- to help protect the American people. And they have to make some very difficult decisions because, as I mentioned yesterday, they are confronted with an enemy that doesn't have scruples, isn't constrained by Constitutions, is not constrained by legal niceties.

Having said that, the OLC memos that were released reflected, in my view, us losing our moral bearings. That's why I've discontinued those enhanced-interrogation programs. For those who carried out these operations within the four corners of legal opinions, or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do not think it's appropriate for them to be prosecuted. With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General, within the parameters of various laws. And I don't want to prejudge that.

As the New York Times notes, he went on to seemingly encourage Congress to get involved:

Mr. Obama, who has been saying that the nation should look ahead rather than focusing on the past, said he is “not suggesting” that a commission be established.

But in response to questions from reporters in the Oval Office, he said, “if and when there needs to be a further accounting,” he hoped that Congress would examine ways to obtain one “in a bipartisan fashion,” from people who are independent and therefore can build credibility with the public.

Obviously, Obama's not keen about this because he's focused on moving forward with his political agenda, and he's afraid a partisan fight over holding Republicans accountable for their lawbreaking during the Bush years will derail that.

In other words, it will take courage. We'll be watching to see how much he actually possesses.