Analysis & Commentary
Liberty & National Security
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
Distracted by Moussaoui
In an Alexandria, Virginia, courtroom, Zacarias Moussaoui and the federal government are acting out for the nation and the world a small drama about revenge. It is hardly clear who will savor revenge more: the defendant who seems likely to be strapped to the executioner’s gurney soon, or the state that injects the lethal combination of fluids.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 04/20/06
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
Court Finds No Relief for Individual Handed to Syria for Torture
Authored by: Jonathan Hafetz
– 03/15/06
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
At the NSA, the Enemy is Us
President Bush famously said that his administration took the battle overseas so that we would not need to fight the war at home. Revelations about the NSA’s warrantless domestic spying suggest that this formulation has the administration’s logic backward: The authority to conduct war elsewhere has been treated as permission to bring the tools of war back home.
Authored by: Aziz Huq
– 03/02/06
Openness and Accountability at Guantanamo
Authored by: Jonathan Hafetz
– 02/21/06