The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to throw out the majority of charges levied against militant activists accused of intimidating voters at a Pennsylvania polling location poses a concern for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights over how the DOJ will handle future voter harassment cases.

“The DOJ’s replies thus far raise new and serious questions about its civil rights enforcement decisions,” the Commission wrote in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder approved Friday.

The case in question, in which several members of the New Black Panther Party brandished clubs in front of a polling place last November, received considerable media attention. A video of the incident on You Tube has received over a million views to date.

The letter went on to detail the Commission’s concern that the injunction against sole defendant Minister King Samir Shabazz is too “narrow”. The order prohibits Shabazz “from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location on any election day in the city of Philadelphia.”

The Comission, which consists of 4 Republicans, 2 Democrats and 2 Independents, plans to further pursue the issue.

“We believe we are obligated to investigate,” the Commission wrote.

Jonathan F. Cohn, who served in the Department of Justice under former President George W. Bush, says the Executive Accountability Act, which would criminalize actions by the executive branch to mislead Congress, would impede rather than produce accurate communication between the executive and legislative branches during times of war. (0:24)

 

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By Learned Foote- Talk Radio News Service

Legal experts on Monday offered their views on H.R. 743, the Executive Accountability Act of 2009 during testimony before the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

The bill would place criminal penalties on the executive branch for willingly misleading Congress in order to persuade it to use armed forces.

Said Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-NC) who introduced the legislation, “Members of Congress must be able to trust our President at his word, especially when making decisions to go to war.”

Jones used the behavior of former presidents Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush during the Vietnam and Iraq Wars as examples of “arrogance of power,” which he hoped could be mitigated by this legislation. However, Jones emphasized that “the bill is not about the past,” and emphasized that it would not be applied retroactively.

Dr. Louis Fisher, a specialist in constitutional law, said that the founders who wrote the Constitution knew that “single executives go to war not for the national interest; they go to war for reasons of military glory.” He said that the authority to “take the country from a state of peace to a state of war was to be given to Congress alone.”

Bruce Fein, a legal consultant and constitutional expert who served in the Department of Justice under President Reagan, said that the President could avoid criminal penalties by simply “sharing all of the information he relied upon to Congress.”

Jonathan F. Cohn, a partner at Sidley and Austin who worked in the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush, disagreed with the previous testimonies. He said that presidents should be “truthful and candid always, and especially in the context when the country makes the grave decision to send its children off to war.”

Cohn said the legislation could “impede inter-branch cooperation,” arguing that it could create a chilling effect due to the “fear of potential prosecution.”

“Punishing the ousted regime may be the preferred course of certain banana republics of the past, but with respect, this should not be the United States’ path in the 21st century.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney explains that the Bush administration acted under the guidance of the Department of Justice at the time when the U.S engaged in waterboarding. Additionally, Cheney says that he does not call waterboarding torture because it was conducted under a legal framework. (0:53)

 

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By Courtney Ann Jackson-Talk Radio News Service

A unified approach to closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay will be crucial in order to meet the one-year deadline signed into law in January by President Obama, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday.

Holder said the Department has “no choice but to release” some of the detainees. He said they must be released because otherwise an order from the In terms of release, we have to release them or an order from the U.S. courts would be defied.

The Department of Justice is taking the lead from the work set out by President Barack Obama to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and ensure that the policies going forward “live up to our nation’s value,” said Holder.

The Guantanamo Review Task Force will make decisions about where detainees will be housed on an individual basis. Holder said that Task Force’s decisions will be guided by “what is in the interest of national security, the foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.”

Ranking Member U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said “the President has announced the closure of Guantanamo Bay without any plan for the terrorists detained there and has admitted that he cannot guarantee that those detainees who are released will not seek to attack our country again.”

In response, Holder reiterated that the Department isn’t going “to do anything, anything that would put the American people at risk. Nothing.”

By Courtney Ann Jackson-Talk Radio News Service

Attorney General Eric Holder discusses the changes being made to the Department of Justice. The top priority remains to be the safety of the American public but the Department is currently pursuing a very specific set of goals.(0:51)

 

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By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News service

Ali Soufan, a former FBI supervisory agent, confirms that the George W. Bush administration lied on its use of torture in its interrogation
processes.

In 2005, President Bush said that “America does not condone torture”,
a statement that has been put into question following the recent
decision by President Barack Obama to publish four memos which detail
the legal justification used by the Bush administration to justify the
methods employed in the interrogation process led by the CIA.

Chairman of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the
Courts Sheldon Whitehouse said “John Yoo (former official in the Department of Justice) told Esquire Magazine that waterboarding was only done ‘three times’ when public reports now indicate that two detainees were waterboarded 83 and 183 times”.

This revelation has hindered the American reputation abroad, resulting
in a struggle between institutions of the government such as the
intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice on who is to blame
the most for having carried out these seances.

Philip Zelikow, former counselor of the State Department, said that “
Attorney General John Ashcroft and his Department of Justice, along
with the White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzalez, assured the
government’s leaders that the proposed program was lawful.”

Whitehouse said that “We were told that waterboarding was
determined to be legal, but were not told how badly the law was
ignored, bastardized and manipulated by the Department of Justice’s
Office of Legal Counsel, nor were we told how furiously government and military lawyers rejected the defective OLC opinions-but we ignored.”

In parallel, Soufan said that “The interrogation team was a
combination between the FBI and the CIA. All of us had the same
opinion that contradicted with the contractor.”

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said “I’m also proud of the fact that
the United states of America, when its made mistakes, has not been
afraid to admit these mistakes and learn from them and pledge not to
make the same mistakes again.”

Ali Soufan, a former FBI supervisory agent who worked under the Bush administration, describes the two methods of interrogation used by both the CIA and the FBI: the “informed interrogation approach” and the “enhanced interrogation method”. The second corresponds to torture and is regarded “compliance rather than to elicit cooperation, according to Soufan. (0:55)

 

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Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) describes the Department of Justice’s request for funds as an “abomination” because this funding may be used to educate and mentor terrorists currently detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility but who may be housed within American soil once the prison is closed. (0:42)

 

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By Michael Ruhl, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service

Ken Boehm believes that justice has been miscarried in the case of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. Today the Department of Justice dropped charges of wrongdoing against the Stevens, after a drawn out legal battle concerning financial disclosure. Boehm, chairman of the watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, said that because the Justice Department failed in its handling of the case, an elected official is not going to be brought to justice after violating the public trust.

Boehm, a former prosecutor, stated how the Department of Justice sould have done it differently.

(03:38)

 

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