Analysis & Commentary
Checks & Balances
Terror 2016
This week, Republicans -aided by Democratic fecklessness-bargained away both liberty and decency in the name of partisan security
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 09/29/06
We’re All Enemy Combatants Now
Today in the Senate Judiciary Committee the Bush administration will unveil proposed new legislation to respond to the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. A final version of this legislation remained concealed right up to the day before the Senate hearing. Such secrecy disarms the public-and more importantly for today’s hearing, congressional staffers who need to brief their bosses-from analyzing and understanding the draft. This secrecy, aside from some leaked drafts of the bill, should sound alarm bells about what the administration is about to propose.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 08/02/06
Wiretapping Unbound
Eighteen years ago , Justice Antonin Scalia assumed the prophet’s cloak and forecast threats to the Constitution’s core balance of powers. A threat, Justice Scalia explained, sometimes comes “in sheep’s clothing: the potential of the asserted principle to effect important change in the equilibrium of power is not immediately evident, and must be discerned by a careful and perceptive analysis. But this wolf comes as a wolf.” Today, another wolf scratches at the door: And it is a beast that has already inflicted heavy damage on the Constitution.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 07/24/06
Hamdan v. Rumsfield: Guidepost or Relic?
When the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, striking down the Bush Administration’s military tribunals, former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger III pronounced it “simply the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law ever. Ever.”
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 07/14/06
Constitution Kerfuffle
Politics makes strange bedfellows. Last week saw an almost unheard of scrambling of allegiances after the FBI searched the congressional office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-La. While the Constitution’s Separation of Powers figured prominently in news of the executive branch decisions to bypass laws against torture and domestic spying, this seemed a wholly unexpected front for the White House’s push for executive power.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 05/31/06
Derelict on Domestic Spying
There is no “drift-net.” There is only a “very specific and very targeted” collection of data. So said General Michael V. Hayden, former chief of the National Security Agency on Feb. 5 this year about the NSA’s domestic activities. Without doubt, senators of both stripes stand ready to grill Gen. Hayden about these statements in light of USA Today’s startling revelation that the NSA has been assembling a mammoth database detailing the source, destination and timing information on almost every telephone call made in the United States.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 05/16/06
Padilla Can’t Wait
Can a U.S. citizen be locked up for three-plus years without access to a court or opportunity to challenge the government’s reasons for detention? Today, the answer in America is a provisional “yes.” And last week the government took one important step toward cementing this “yes” into a permanent power.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 04/11/06
In the Dark on Wiretaps
Almost four months after The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency is spying on Americans in the United States without obtaining judicial warrants, we still are in the dark about what exactly the president ordered the NSA to do.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 04/04/06
Counterterrorism Requires Accountability
Time and again, we the people learn too late a measure ranked as essential to the nation’s safety is grounded on shifting factual sands. The founders of our nation, of course, anticipated the risk that government, in pursuing security, would overreach and err. What is dangerous is that the constitutional mechanisms crafted to identify, expose and check such foul-ups, which James Madison famously called our “auxiliary protections,” have recently faltered.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 03/09/06
Counterterrorism Requires Accountability
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 03/09/06