Holder to Liz and KAS, "Reprehensible"

Attorney General Eric Holder took his turn in front of the Senatorial talking-points firing squad (also known as a “Senate Committee Hearing,” where Senators don’t bother with what could be regarded as inquiry and instead try to fit as many one-liner rhetorical pot-shots they can during their allotted time) Wednesday. Interestingly enough, the New York Times reported the event in a considerably concise manner: touching upon the concerns Republicans (and Democratic New Yorkers) had with the idea of the Justice Department holding terrorist trials in New York, or in the United States period. The Times is also sure to point out the small spat between Senator Jeff Sessions (R – AL) and Mr. Holder, while de-emphasizing Mr. Holder’s respectable ability to quibble his way around Senator Session’s questions and points. In the end, even Senator Schumer (D – NY) pointedly registered his view that New Yorkers’ had developed a fairly strong consensus against any terrorist trial being held in the state.

Of course, I write for this website that encourages Liz Cheney in a direction that would land her in some sort of public office. With that in mind, I had to journey into forbidden waters to find what truly interested followers of Draft Liz Cheney, which was the part of the testimony where the Attorney General goes out of his way to address his contempt for Keep America Safe’s campaign to elucidate the nine lawyers working on terrorism cases that had defended ‘suspected’ terrorists in the past. Fortunately, the HuffingtonPost does a fair and balanced article on the Attorney General’s scornful remarks:

"There has been an attempt to take the names of the people who represent Guantanamo detainees and to drag their reputations through the mud," he said, when pressed to disclose more information about these lawyers by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "There were reprehensible ads in essence to question their patriotism. I'm not going to allow these kids... I'm not going to be a part of this effort."
Holder continued: "Their names are out there now. I'm simply not going to be a part of that effort. I would not allow good, decent lawyers who have followed the best traditions of American jurisprudence... I will not allow their reputations to be besmirched. I will not be a part of that."

Had Mr. Holder answered the questions raised regarding the Justice Department’s employment of attorneys that had been involved in terrorist defense cases, no one's reputation would have been “dragged through the mud.” Furthermore, it was not for the purpose of dragging through the mud that Senators (before Keep America Safe even became involved) asked the Attorney General for those names in November to begin with, it was in the interest of full disclosure and transparency: these two nefarious notions that the Obama Administration promised would be at the forefront of their Administration. When the Justice Department ducked and dived, Keep America Safe stepped up to the plate and Liz Cheney called Attorney General Holder out on it.

I find it interesting that Holder's lawyers are “good” and “decent,” while the Bush Administration’s lawyers faced possible indictments the entire year following Bush 43’s ride into the sunset. What is killing the Obama Administration is the knowledge that they might be able to kick around Sarah Palin and a few others by calling them stupid or letting SNL do their dirty work for them; but they cannot do the same with Liz Cheney. This is what makes her such a force inside the beltway, and why we need to push her in that direction.

-rj

Liz Cheney at the SRLC, New Orleans 2010

Keep America Safe.com's Liz Cheney Addresses SRLC 2010 from Keep America Safe on Vimeo.

Liz Cheney on "The O'Reilly Factor" (April 07, 2010)

Liz Cheney on O'Reilly Factor Tonight

Howdy all!  I know it has been a while and I apologize.  Nevertheless, we are getting back on the horse and shouting from atop our noble steed as we race through the Town Square:

Liz Cheney will be on The O'Reilly Factor tonight!  Check your local listings; however, the typical time is 8:00pm and 11:00pm EST. 

On a side note, some nugatory little post was recently added to the Santa Monica College: Corsair website about Mrs. Cheney.  The author's main point?

Terrorists have killed people and spread terror, just like criminals do. They deserve legal representation

Furthermore, the author makes the point that:

Some Republicans chose to ignore the word "all" in the Sixth Amendment. They believe that right should be only for American criminals. But as stated in the Bill of Rights, "all" deserve counsel.

Surely someone might remind our friend out west that the Constitution is a binding document between our government and the governed, and not our government and the entire world.  If the term "all" is to be applied in that way, we are going to have a difficult time fighting wars where we do not have the benefit of 'trying' a terrorist before we kill him while he is driving a car bomb through a security checkpoint. 

-rj

Rush-ing to Her Side

Rush Limbaugh came out and stood by Liz Cheney's, and Keep America Safe's, side yesterday during his radio show: 

We have an administration who, giving them the benefit of the doubt, believe that it's partially our fault and that if we would just engage in some "outreach" to the Islamists and show them that we have a great set of values here and the American dream is alive and well, and say, "No matter what you do to us, we will still tie both hands behind our back to be fair dealing with you," and until we do that we will not garner once again the respect of the world that was lost during the Bush years. Well, I don't know if anybody's seen the polls lately, but respect for the United States since Obama took over is plummeting! Now, as far as I know, nobody in the Liz Cheney organization is suggesting these people don't deserve representation or lawyers. One thing that I'm confident in saying is that they should be tried in military tribunals and bringing them into civil courts in the United States is an absolute abomination of a mistake.

This administration has made it clear that they don't have much interest in the defense of this country from this particular enemy, and so there are people that are very much concerned that that laxity on that issue be dealt with. So if Liz Cheney and her group want to call this bunch of Department of Justice lawyers "the Al-Qaeda 7," (snorts) fine with me. I wish I'd-a come up with it. What's the difference in that and the Chicago Seven? What's the difference in that and the FALN 32? I think it's pretty clever, and it sure as hell got everybody's attention, didn't it? And everybody wants to know what I think about Liz Cheney. Well, now, you know, I would much rather have Liz Cheney and her group in charge of defending this country than Eric Holder, Barack Obama and that "sis," Janet Napolitano. I would much rather have Liz Cheney and anybody she knows at the Department of Justice as attorney general. I'd much rather have her at the State Department.

I'll Mega Dittos to that!
 
-rj

No John Adams (Weekly Standard Defends Liz and KAS)

One of the main points that Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe critics have been using in their attacks on the "Al Qaeda 7" video is that John Adams represented British soldiers after the Boston Massacre.  Well Thomas Joscelyn at The Weekly Standard has a phenomenal piece explaining why these two similar situations seperated by over 200 years of history, are actually very dissimilar when the facts are actually taken into account: 

The conservative critics argue that the lawyers’ work on behalf of detainees is a strictly noble pursuit. They point to John Adams’ representation of British soldiers after the Boston massacre as evidence that the lawyers are simply the heirs of a longstanding and honorable legal process. The comparison is absurd for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that Adams did not represent America’s enemies during an actual war, as the lawyers in question have.
But the Times article also ends with this:

David Remes, a lawyer who represents 18 detainees, said in a telephone interview from Guantánamo that the deeper point of the attack on the lawyers was political.

The goal, Mr. Remes suggested, “was to make the Obama administration and the Justice Department even more gun-shy than they are on Guantánamo issues.”

What do the conservative lawyers think of David Remes?

He is no John Adams.

Please go read the rest of the piece, the plot thickens, trust me.

-rj

Defending the Indefensible? Liz, McCarthy(s) and the GWOT

I defend Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe at TheLobbyist. 

An old charge has been brought back from the grave and used against members of Keep America Safe, the political action committee dedicated to ensuring America’s benevolent hegemony abroad, as well as her safety at home. The PAC was started by William Kristol, son of the late (great) Irving Kristol; Elizabeth Cheney (daughter of Dick Cheney); and Debra Burlingame, “sister of Charles F. ‘Chic’ Burlingame, III, pilot of American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.” It would behoove us to keep in mind the effort that critics of KAS take in singling out only Kristol and Cheney in their attacks. Let’s be clear however, that members of both the Right and Left are calling all three Founders “McCarthy-ites” when they levy these charges of “fear-mongering” and borderline Neo-Nazism.




What’s funny, is that being called a McCarthyite is extraordinarily mild compared to the perpetual reduction ad Hitlerum the left consistently employs against National Security Conservatives. While Washington Post editorial columnist Jonathan Capehart dares not tread past the label “fear-mongering” in his quaint and insipid blog post about the matter of “The Al-Qaeda 7,” one of the members of his amen corner dares tread where… well, most liberals dare to tread:

The Rabid Reichwingers like Lizzy Borden Cheney, and Dick Adolf Cheney, are liken to Vampires. Once they get a taste of BLOOD, they want more.



They know by attacking these Lawyers, that their Reichwing Minions will pressure any Lawyer who would dare defend the Terrorist.



They assume everyone’s as Ignorant as their Minions, and won’t remeber all the court cases doing the Bush Error, concerning Terrorist.



In reality the real Terrorist America should be concern with are people like Lizzy B. Cheney and the ever increasing “RABID REICH”.

(Spelling mistakes in the original, due in part to modern liberal education I assume)



Andrew Sullivan also falls into the old reduction ad Hitlerum a number of times, one instance being his 2007 rant against President Bush’s enhanced interrogations. How depressing, that an erudite student of Dr. Harvey Mansfield would resort to such empty hyperbole. But I digress.



So liberals like to associate Republicans with a political party responsible for the extermination of twelve million plus fellow human beings; all of a sudden being called a McCarthyite doesn’t sting as bad. One of these days, it is my hope that being called a Neo-Nazi, a Klansmen, a McCarthyist, et cetera will ring hollow, like the heads from whence they were spoken. I guess this makes me an idealist.



The fury is over a recent KAS add which addresses the hiring of nine attorneys in the Department of Justice, who also happened to have represented suspected terrorists in the past. This matter is a bit unnerving for some as I am sure the ACLU would not be so inclined as to hire, say, Robert Bork; or how about the Southern Poverty law Center giving jobs to a handful of lawyers who represented Aryan Nations, the Klan, or real Neo-Nazis. Does that mean that those people should not be hired? Of course not, and by now anyone who has been keeping up with the news has heard all of the historical anecdotes where good Americans represented clients who went against America’s principles in the name of justice in the rule of law. The most famous example being reiterated is that of John Adams’ representation of the English soldiers who opened fire on a crowd of Colonialists in Boston, Massachusetts in 1770.



The main point, however, is not that the Department of Justice hired people who used to represent suspected terrorists. Perhaps this entire issue would have been avoided if Eric Holder, the Attorney general, had just given the names to the Senate back in November 2009 when they requested further information on the matter, as Marc Thiessen points out in the Washington Post:

In November, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Holder a letter requesting that he identify officials who represented terrorists or worked for organizations advocating on their behalf, the cases and projects they worked on before coming to the Justice Department, the cases and projects they’ve worked on since joining the administration, and a list of officials who have recused themselves because of prior work on behalf of terrorist detainees.



Holder stonewalled for nearly three months. Finally, two weeks ago, he admitted that nine political appointees in the Justice Department had represented or advocated for terrorist detainees, but he failed to identify seven whose names were not publicly known or to directly answer other questions the senators posed. So Keep America Safe, a group headed by Liz Cheney, posted a Web ad demanding that Holder identify the “al-Qaeda seven,” and a subsequent Fox News investigation unearthed the names. Only under this public pressure did the Justice Department confirm their identities — but Holder still refuses to disclose their roles in detention policy.

Andrew McCarthy also addresses the issue:

Only our terrorist enemies get the red carpet treatment. “Enemies” in this context is not hyperbole. We are at war under a congressional authorization. Nearly 200,000 young Americans are in harm’s way. But enemy operatives are returning to their jihad against our troops and our citizens thanks to the help of American law firms. Only lawyers demand immunity from the ordinary duties of citizenship in a nation at war. And they further demand to be above criticism for donating their skills to al Qaeda operatives (though American prisoners must represent themselves in habeas corpus actions). The profession would reinterpret “patriotism” in total relativism: some risk their lives to fight the enemy for us, while others litigate so the enemy may be freed to return to the fight. Americans are not buying – that’s why Liz Cheney’s common sense resonates.

As for Jonathan Capehart and the sycophantic left, I look forward to their confrontations with their peers about the way they treated Bush Administration lawyers who meticulously explored the issue of torture, enhanced interrogations, the War on Terror, and the law. That was exactly what lawyers like John Yoo, David Addington, Jim Haynes, Steve Bradbury and other lawyers did when they wrote what are considered the ‘nefarious torture memos’ now. Writing in-depth analysis into the heart and soul of security and the law warranted harassment by the fringe left at their private residences and even possible criminal indictments from Congress.



In the end, Senator Grassley, Liz Cheney, Keep America Safe, and FoxNews were asking their government a question regarding the most important issue facing our Federal government. This should be an issue that Conservatives and some libertarian-leaning friends can unite around, considering both consider the Federal government’s central role to be protecting citizens. We have a right to ask questions regarding our safety; and the Obama Administration has a right to not answer us. But don’t get your panties in a bunch when you get called out for promising transparency, and again fail to deliver on your campaign promise. It’s politics. Grow up.



-rj