While most historians agree these people were among some of the greatest legal minds of their respective times, if not of all time, Ms Cheney believes she knows better because daddy says so.

Now, without further ado, we present Liz Cheney’s “Unpatriotic Seven”

John Adams defended British solders accused of perpetrating the Boston Massacre; he even had the gall to call it “one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.”

Alexander Hamilton represented Crown Loyalists following the Revolutionary War and advocated against expelling them from the United States.

Abraham Lincoln defended the accused murderer of Lincoln’s former commanding officer in the Black Hawk War.

Henry Clay defended Aaron Burr, who was accused of trying to make war on Mexico.

Felix Frankfurter publicly argued for a retrial of alleged anarchist murderers Sacco and Vanzetti.

Robert Taft aided Nazi war criminals by criticizing the Nuremberg Trials.

Telford Taylor, chief prosecutor at Nuremberg Trials, turned soft and defended Communists during the 1950s.

Cheney’s office declined to comment on reports that she is aggressively pursuing the abolition of the penny and the ten dollar bill.

Original Article: Liz Cheney Announces New “Unpatriotic Seven”: Alexander Hamilton “Irate”

In the memoir’s final chapter, humbly titled “Rove: the Myth,” the architect of a two-term Republican presidency reports how angry he was when he read a passage in then-Sen. Barack Obama’s second book lumping him in with Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and Ralph Reed as “conservative operatives” with “fiery rhetoric” like “No new taxes” or “We are a Christian nation.”

“I certainly don’t believe and have never said, ‘We are a Christian nation,’” writes Rove. “I put the offending page in my pocket and went about my business.” Later that day, he encountered Obama and fell victim to “feistiness,” challenging the senator for using “my name and the word ’said’ and quote marks.” Obama, Rove reports, blanched when the torn-out page was shown to him and tried to wriggle out of the conversation: “It seemed to me he didn’t much care that he had attributed to me something I had never said and found offensive.”

Four years later, Rove offers up the encounter as proof that Obama’s image as “the truest, purest proponent of a fresh new style of politics” is a ruse, and snarls that “the last time I checked, I hadn’t bombed any government building (like, say, Obama’s great friend William Ayers); or asked that God ‘damn’ America (like, say, Obama’s former pastor and close friend Jeremiah Wright); or declared that I was proud of my country for the first time in my life only when I was in my forties (like, say, Obama’s wife, Michelle).”

It’s a revealing passage — it takes up three whole pages — that demonstrates just how Rove thinks. Accused of being a steamrolling, divisive political operative, he locates a loophole in the argument, and closes by insulting the wife of the person who criticized him. Apart from some gripping narrative sections about how the inner sanctum of the White House reacted to the September 11 attacks, “Courage and Consequence” reads less like the story of one of history’s most powerful presidential advisers and more like a quickie fightback book from some apparatchik ensnared in a petty scandal.

Rove’s quest to debunk and overpower his enemies in politics and the press begins with his account of the “broken family” that raised him. Nineteen pages in, he starts swinging at journalists — James Moore, Paul Alexander, Wayne Slater — who’ve looked into the suicide of his mother and the rumored homosexuality of his father for clues about his psychology. “The writers who are fascinated with whether my father was gay,” Rove snarls, “are really more interested in implying that all people who have gay relatives or friends must support same-sex marriage; otherwise they are bigots and hypocrites. And if one of these people happens to be Karl Rove, so much the better.”

In other, less personal sections of the book, Rove takes the same care in dissembling what his enemies have been saying. Throughout, he settles scores with political opponents while seeing past the fault in his own. Recapping one of the coups of his early career, he admits that he “destroyed the career” of former Texas Railroad Commissioner Lena Guerroro by leaking the proof that she had embellished her academic record. “Did I pass on to a reporter the information that pointed to our opponent’s lie?” Rove writes. “Absolutely, you bet, and I have no regrets about it whatsoever. Why should I? The information, after all, was true. That should have some bearing on this issue.”

Rove doesn’t have the same attitude about information that damaged his own client, George W. Bush. Rove devotes a chapter title — “Derailed by a DUI” — and five pages to how Democrats killed the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign’s momentum with a leak about Bush’s 1976 DUI arrest in Maine. Mournfully, Rove recounts the reaction of his campaign — “Bush called it ‘dirty politics’ and said, ‘I don’t know if my opponent’s campaign was involved, but I do know that the person who admitted doing it at the last minute was a Democratic and partisan in Maine.” Rove’s regret was that he didn’t outsmart the Democrats by leaking the information before they did: “Of the things I would redo in the 2000 election, making a timely announcement about Bush’s DUI would top the list.”

Rove’s pride and tunnel vision about his campaign tactics aren’t anything new in the Washington memoir genre. Much of Sarah Palin’s “Going Rogue” featured the same sort of finger-pointing about her brief bid for the vice presidency. If anything, Rove takes more obvious relish in attacking the people who made his campaigns difficult — it’s mostly “the kooky left-wing blogosphere” that thinks he ran a dirty campaign against John McCain in 2000, or that only an “imbecile” could have believed the 2004 exit polls that showed a Kerry-Edwards win, and so on.

But unlike Palin — unlike most people with his portfolio — Rove was in the cockpit for much of a consequential presidency that launched two wars and dramatically expanded the size of the federal government. He writes about this the same way he writes about minor tiffs and campaign tricks. He spends a page trying to debunk the idea that Bush ever told Americans to “go shopping” after the September 11 attacks. Technically, he’s right. The closest Bush ever came to using those two precise words — the moment that most people remember as the “go shopping” moment — were his September 27, 2001 remarks at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport when he urged Americans to “get down to Disney World in Florida” and “take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” But Rove insists that the “closest he ever came” was a different speech in which Bush praised Americans for “going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshiping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball.” Even there, Rove skips past the argument made by critics — that Bush, in a unique position to demand more of Americans, gave an “all-clear” sign and moved on. In writing about Hurricane Katrina, one of his only regrets is “flying over the region in Air Force One on Wednesday, rather than landing.” In one of Rove’s few admissions, he admits that he’s “one of the people responsible for this mistake.”

“Courage and Consequence” is filled with such arguments. Pre-release excepts about Rove’s take on the Iraq War — that his biggest regret was that he should have worked harder to spin the fallout over the lack of WMD in Iraq — foreshadowed the way Rove would tackle most of the controversies of his tenure. At several points, he simply misstates facts. He impugns the character of former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, who was removed from his position in New Mexico after declining to file politicized lawsuits, by claiming that Iglesias was incompetent and gunning for electoral office. Paragraphs later, he claims that the only qualm that Democrats have with former U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin — who resigned after negative attention on his own politicized appointment — is that they feared it would help Griffin’s career. Left unmentioned is the real Democratic argument, that Griffin helped the Bush-Cheney campaign challenge the voter registrations of voters in largely African-American, Democratic-leaning areas. But to Rove, the most important Republican political strategist of his generation, Democratic worries about election integrity are basically one big joke. In an unsurprising chapter about the 2000 presidential election recount — revelations are limited to the angry looks and sighs that various players gave to Rove — he refers to the Bush team in Florida as “freedom fighters whose homeland had been occupied as they grappled with a blitzkrieg of lawsuits filed by Gore’s attorneys and street protests led by Jesse Jackson.”

Very little of this should surprise observers of Rove in power or out of power, as a quotable White House aide and then as a Fox News pundit who has reliably attacked the Democrats. Rove’s disinterest in policy or consequences of policy isn’t surprising, either. (”I didn’t pretend to be Carl von Clausewitz or Henry Kissinger, but I knew the Iraq War wasn’t going well,” Rove writes of his thinking in December 2006.) The historical value of the book itself is minimal. It functions, instead, as a test of whether Rove’s combination of pique and pride will be helpful as Bush administration veterans argue that they spent eight years changing America for the better, over the cries of critics, only to watch their work be ruined by Barack Obama and his pack of elitist liberals.

Original Article: Rove Speaks: It’s Everybody Else’s Fault – Washington Independent

I’m not a theologian, but it’s my understanding that most of the world’s major, monotheistic faith traditions embrace “social justice” as a fundamental pillar. Beck just encouraged a whole lot of people to abandon a whole lot of houses of worship.

This is especially true of Roman Catholics. Indeed, the very phrase “social justice” is believed to have been coined by a 19th-century Jesuit, and later popularized by Father Charles Coughlin.

With that in mind, First Things is wondering whether Glenn Beck just urged his followers to abandon the Catholic Church. Joe Carter noted, “Could Beck’s claim be construed as ‘anti-Catholic?’ Yes and no. I think if anyone else had made the remark it would have been hard to dismiss the anti-Catholic undertones. But Beck is a special case: He is too prone to say any dumb thing that pops into his head and too ignorant about history and religion to truly understand the implications of his statement. This doesn’t excuse him, of course, but it certainly is reason not to be too shocked when a self-professed ‘rodeo clown’ advises people to leave their churches over Catholic ‘code words’ like social justice.”

Nevertheless, this could be a real headache for Beck, especially if Bill Donohue and the Catholic League treat Beck like they’d treat anyone else who just encouraged Americans to leave churches who take social justice seriously.

Post Script: It’s also worth remembering that if Beck is serious about the danger of these “code words,” he may have to leave his own church, too.

via BECK TARGETS CHURCHES THAT EMBRACE ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE’ – The Washington Monthly.

Williams Walsh reports that while private companies are shifting their pension investments into securities with lower rates of return and little risk, government pension funds are facing shortfalls and turning to risky stock market investments to make up for shorting contributions for years.

[Governments] use long-range estimates that presume high investment returns will cover most of the cost of the benefits they must pay. And that, they say, allows them to make smaller contributions along the way.Most have been assuming their investments will pay 8 percent a year on average, over the long term. This is based on an assumption that stocks will pay 9.5 percent on average, and bonds will pay about 5.75 percent, in roughly a 60-40 mix.

In other words, governments offered generous pensions to their employees, then paid less into their own pension system than the federal government allows corporations to do, while claiming that the stocks in which they invested would earn 10 percent each and every year, regardless of swings in the market.

That plan, says Williams Walsh, has worked out about as well as a regular investor might expect it would.

The problem now is that bond rates have been low for years, and stocks have been prone to such wild swings that a 60-40 mixture of stocks and bonds is not paying 8 percent. Many public pension funds have been averaging a little more than 3 percent a year for the last decade, so they have fallen behind where their planning models say they should be.

The pension fund contributions earned less than the rate of inflation in some years, meaning that they lost long-term value.

Now, if a regular person lost value in her 401k retirement fund, or saw that it wasn’t earning enough to fund her retirement, that person might put more into the retirement fund. But not a government pension plan!

“In effect, they’re going to Las Vegas,” said Frederick E. Rowe, a Dallas investor and the former chairman of the Texas Pension Review Board, which oversees public plans in that state. “Double up to catch up.”Though they generally say that their strategies are aimed at diversification and are not riskier, public pension funds are trying a wide range of investments: commodity futures, junk bonds, foreign stocks, deeply discounted mortgage-backed securities and margin investing. And some states that previously shunned hedge funds are trying them now.

In order to earn the illusive rates of return that even marginally risky investments couldn’t provide, states are gambling their employees’ pensions on riskier investments — in part because they cannot afford to fund the plans adequately in the first place, let alone in the midst of yet another state budget crisis.

Of course, the elected officials in whose hands the decisions ultimately rest can’t cut benefits, admit that they underfunded their pension obligations or even cop to writing unrealistic rates of return into their pension plans to enable them to underfund their obligations. They’ve got every incentive to gamble that they can make up costs, especially given that they won’t be in office by the time the pension funds have real trouble meeting their obligations to employees.

Original Article: States Play Fast and Loose With Employee Pension Funds – Washington Independent

“For the first time in Minnesota history, a legislative committee contemplated the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state on Monday.” About time, I’d say. And it’s a shame that Minnesota’s political landscape has been dirtied by the reprehensible beliefs of a small group of narrow-minded Christian bigots.

It wasn’t that way when I left – good Scandinavian pragmatism still had some meaning then – but now the ideologues are out in full force, spewing bile and hate everywhere they go. Case in point: In response to  “moving testimony” by LGBT families about “the hardships their families face because they cannot marry,” a pair of these bigots – congressional candidates both, I’m saddened to admit, had this to say:

I’m impressed that she noticed, given the well known fear extremist Christians have of sexuality and the human body. But really, that there is a significant difference between men and women has no meaning beyond that which she gives it by way of her myopic and close-minded view of gender and gender roles.

She stated that “Allowing a black woman and a white man to marry does not change the definition of marriage. However, allowing two men or two women to marry would fundamentally change that definition.”

No, in point of fact, it would not. Marriage is between two people who love each other and wish to formalize their union. It makes no difference what the genders of the couple are. Love, I submit, is love. And rights, Ms. White, are rights. And the Constitution does not have any exclusionary clauses with regard to rights.

White also garnered some laughs from the audience when she said, “Studies also show that the average homosexual has hundreds of sexual partners in his lifetime… and I repeat hundreds.”

Let’s be perfectly honest and direct here: this is something extremist Christians like to say. Like children who think they’re on to something clever, they will repeat it at every opportunity.

But here is the important point: It has no basis in fact. She has no studies to prove that gays and lesbians are more promiscuous than any pastor’s daughter.

And here is where Barb White stands up and testifies to all, “I am a narrow-minded and intolerant bigot”: “I’m here today to tell you that homosexuality and lesbian behavior is unhealthy,” claiming that gays and lesbians have higher rates of STDs than anyone else in the world, including, she asserts, “gay bowel disease,” an ailment the author of the article correctly points out that does not exist but which “is often used by religious right figures to paint gay men as diseased.”

I would like to submit this thought to Ms. White (since you seem to have few of your own): it is irrelevant how promiscuous a person is – it’s none of your damned business. It has nothing to do with their right to get married, or do you intend to impose a “promiscuity test” for marriage candidates – across the board, straight and LGBT? If you sleep around you lose your marriage rights? After all, if promiscuity is the issue, you have to apply the standard equally.

Teresa Collett

But as I said above, there were two congressional candidates exposing their bigotry at this gathering. The other nitwit adding her voice to the hatefest was St. Thomas University law professor Teresa Stanton Collett, “who is running as a Republican for the 4th Congressional District, warned that Minnesota’s Christians are under attack.” Teresa Collett is proof positive that you can get a college degree and still be as dumb as a box of hammers.

Christians under attack? It is difficult to see how this can be so, since Christianity doesn’t enter into the equation. The only people being attacked are those who are different from Ms. Collett: in other words, the LGBT community. I don’t know of any LGBT couple saying she should lose her rights because she is a Christian, or that Christianity should be outlawed.I don’t know of any bans being imposed (or even suggested) against Christianity or Christian belief. Ms. Collett’s beliefs are not being imposed on in any way. If you believe it’s wrong, don’t do it. It’s really as easy as that.

But let’s give this hate monger an opportunity to display her low thinking:

“Make no mistake: Marriage, as a civil institution, as a legal institution, is grounded not merely in religion but also in the biological reality that sex makes children and children need a mom and a dad,” she said. “And should we choose to redefine that legally we will put the religious and moral beliefs of all Minnesotans at issue.”

This is not much of an argument. All Minnesotans? She’s wrong about that. Not every Minnesotan is a narrow-minded bigot like her. But she is right that marriage is a civil, not a religious, institution, but she is also wrong because it is not historically grounded in religion. Her god did not invent the institution of marriage and has no exclusive rights to it.

Further, I would like to point out to Ms. Collett that the Bible presents all sorts of marriage scenarios, none of them including one man and on woman. Even in Jesus’ day polygyny (one man, multiple wives) was common. It is significant that Jesus did not take the time to denounce it.

But let the hate flow: “Churches and religiously affiliated institutions will lose their tax-exempt status,” she said.

I don’t see how this is a logical outcome of granting people their Constitutional rights, but they should lose it anyway, I say, as they blatantly and illegally engage in politicking.

The article goes on to inform us that “She claimed that Christian colleges would be forced to house same-sex couples in dorms, social work students would be kicked out of school if they refused to counsel gays and lesbians, politicians would revoke funds from religious organizations, and parents would be arrested for speaking out against homosexuality.”

Wow, those poor Christians. As opposed to say LGBT couples having no rights at all, at present, to get married, and who lack many other rights held by heterosexuals, who are banned from joining certain organizations (even if those organizations are publicly funded).

What Teresa Collett really wants is a right to violate the constitutional rights of individuals based on who hey fall in love with, all the while pretending to be concerned about rights. In truth, the only right she is concerned about is her right to deprive other people of theirs.

In the end, we are told, “The hourlong testimony from both sides contemplated three bills: one to create civil unions, one to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages and one to allow full legal marriage for same-sex couples. The hearing was for informational purposes only, and no vote was taken.”

via Equal Rights Are Not anti-Christian :: A Heathen’s Day.

State senator Roy Ashburn was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol on Wednesday at 2am in Sacramento, after police saw the car he was driving swerving erratically. An unidentified male passenger was in the car with Ashburn.

The sources told CBS13 that Ashburn, a father of four, had that night been at Faces, which touts itself as “Sacramento’s premier GLBTI Nightclub since 1985.”

Ashburn was arrested and charged with driving under the influence, and driving with a blood alcohol level higher than .08 percent — both misdemeanors. He was released from jail on $1400 bond.

Ashburn, who has a history of opposing gay rights, issued a contrite apology for the drunk driving arrest yesterday. “I am deeply sorry for my actions and offer no excuse for my poor judgment,” he said in a statement. “I accept complete responsibility for my conduct and am prepared to accept the consequences for what I did.”

Ashburn’s Senate term ends this year. He represents parts of Kern and Tulare counties, in the central part of the state.

Original Article: Sources: Family Values GOPer Was At Gay Club Before Drunk Driving Arrest – TPMMuckraker

The awesome power he held in his hands! The utter disregard for vulnerable Americans he exhibited while wielding it!

Bunning is a Republican superhero. He personifies the mean-spirited, hypocritical, wealthy-serving, obstructionist Republican Party. As a result, his fellow GOP senators championed him. South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint said, “He’s my hero this week.” Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions said, “I respect him for the courage he’s shown.” Bunning’s obstruction should be “honored” by the Senate, said Tennessee Republican Bob Corker. And Texas Republican John Cornyn said he admired Bunning’s obstructionist tactics.

Eighteen Republicans joined Bunning Tuesday evening in voting to oppose extending unemployment benefits for a month and providing highway funding to re-employ the furloughed 2,000.

Republicans clearly admire obstructionism that hurts average Americans. It didn’t matter that the legislation was going to pass eventually no matter what Bunning did. It didn’t matter that Bunning could have made his hypocritical point by delaying legislation that didn’t affect people’s everyday lives. What mattered to Bunning and his backers is that Republicans — the minority in the Senate — succeeded in holding up Americans.

Though Bunning blathered about blockading the bill to ensure it did not add to the federal deficit, no such high-minded intent existed. Bunning made that clear when he agreed to end his obstruction in exchange for a vote that he knew would fail on an amendment to fund the bill.

During the six-day ordeal, Bunning bemoaned his own losses – missing the opportunity to watch a televised college basketball game because he was forced to defend his obstructionist position on the Senate floor and losing his cool on national TV as lowly reporters attempted to follow him onto an elevator exclusively for use by high-fallutin’ Senators. And he treated others with disdain – flipping the finger at a TV news man and growling, “tough sh*t,” at two fellow senators, Democrats, of course, as they pleaded with him to release the unemployment money.

In 1998, Former President Bill Clinton described Bunning as “mean-spirited.” That’s appropriate not just for Bunning, but also for the party he represents.

This is the party that has obstructed health insurance reform for a year, preventing millions of uncovered Americans from finally securing insurance while at the same time the GOP’s impeding progress allowed greedy insurance companies to continue dropping sick policy holders. This is the party that supported former President George Bush’s unfunded stimulus bill but opposed the stimulus bill proposed by President Obama to help reverse the worsening economy and rising unemployment that he inherited from Bush. Unfunded legislation, including the Medicare prescription program, was fine by Republicans when Bush was in office. But suddenly it’s not while Obama is President.

Bunning claimed he engaged in his one-man ban on the unemployment benefit extension because Congress recently passed pay-as-you-go legislation requiring that each spending bill include a funding mechanism. Of course, what he failed to mention is that he and his Party of No voted against the pay-go legislation. This was a second no on pay-go for Bunning, who did it in 2005 as well.

Bunning and the Republicans say they are just worried sick about the national debt, but they reject all proposals to deal with it. Another example is the Deficit Commission. Bunning and his Party of No also opposed creating this commission to cut the national debt. This defines the word hypocrite.

While stopping funds for the unemployed and adding 2,000 more people to the unemployment rolls, Bunning handled another constituent group – the rich – with enormously more tender care. He and his fellow Republicans cut the taxes of millionaires while Bush was in office. And like the Bush Stimulus bill, the Republicans didn’t bother providing a way to fill the revenue hole they dug when they gave rich people the break.

Similarly, Bunning supported a farm bill that allows farmers earning up to $750,000 a year to collect government subsidies, but felt it was fine to cut off “government subsidies” to the unemployed.

Bunning got high-level Republican support for that position. The Senate Republican whip, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona asserted that unemployment benefits dissuade furloughed workers from seeking jobs “because people are being paid even though they’re not working.” A total of two Republican senators, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Susan Collins of Maine, publicly asked Bunning to release the unemployment checks. The others either supported his obstruction with their silence or, like Kyl, openly backed him.

Despite Kyl’s contempt for unemployed Americans who in this Great Recession are forced to compete with five others for every job opening, the real deadbeat is Bunning. In January 2009, Bunning missed more than a week at the start of Congress and refused to explain his absence. Later that year, Bunning was the only senator to miss the Christmas Eve vote on the health insurance reform bill. Bunning skipped nearly half of all Senate floor votes in December, a total of 21, one more than ailing, 92-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd missed. Bunning gets paid $170,000 by the government, and collects top-notch government health benefits, whether he shows up for work or not. But this Republican Superhero felt it was fine to cut off paltry checks and COBRA health insurance matches for the unemployed whose average benefits would add up to $15,236 a year.

In his years in the Senate, Bunning has repeatedly voted against the health insurance program for poor children called CHIP. He opposed funding for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. He rejected additional funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission as poisonous pet food and lead-painted toys from China flooded U.S. shores. He said no to foreclosure aid and assistance to those unable to afford winter heating bills.

Bunning embodies the Party of Obstruction. No unemployment benefits. No health insurance reform. Not even health insurance for impoverished children. No. No. No for working folks.

The GOP is, however, the Party of Obliging corporate and wealthy interests: Yes. Yes. Yes for the rich.

Original Article: Leo W. Gerard: Bunning Put a Face on Obstructionist, Mean-Spirited Republican Party – The Huffington Post

Let us explain.

Yesterday, Cheney’s outfit, a group called Keep America Safe, went up with a blistering ad that attacked Justice Department lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees and are now working on detainee issues. The ad dubbed the lawyers “the Al Qaeda Seven” and asked “whose values do they share?” while flashing an image of Osama bin Laden.

It turns out that among the many high-profile lawyers who have represented so-called “terrorist detainees” is a top attorney with Rudy Giuliani’s firm, Bracewell Giuliani, according to court documents examined by TPMmuckraker.

Bracewell Giuliani Attorney Carol Elder Bruce, a distinguished white collar litigator, is listed as counsel in two detainee habeas cases, EL-MASHAD et al v. BUSH et al and ALLADEEN et al v. BUSH et al. Both are in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.

El-Mashad, an Egyptian national who was captured near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in late 2001, was released to Albania late last month.

To be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with attorneys representing detainees. In fact, the work — usually done on a pro bono basis — is seen by many as admirable.

As the DOJ pointed out in a letter to Republican senators who argue that lawyers who represented detainees have a conflict of interest, at least 34 of the 50 largest U.S. law firms have either represented detainees or filed amicus briefs in support of detainees.

Bruce declined to comment on the Cheney ad or her Guantanamo cases, citing the sensitivity of the ongoing litigation. Bracewell Giuliani Partner Marc Mukasey, son of Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, praised Bruce as “an extraordinary lawyer” when she was hired by the firm in 2008.

This isn’t the first time lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees have come under attack. In 2007, a Pentagon official publicly attacked law firms for “representing terrorists.” He resigned shortly after the remarks. At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he disagreed with the comments and the president of the American Bar Association said:

“Lawyers represent people in criminal cases to fulfill a core American value: the treatment of all people equally before the law. To impugn those who are doing this critical work — and doing it on a volunteer basis — is deeply offensive to members of the legal profession, and we hope to all Americans.”

Asked about the Cheney ad yesterday, Nancy Slonim, director of policy communications at the ABA, said the group does not “comment on specific circumstances.”

Original Article: Will Liz Cheney Attack Rudy Giuliani’s Firm For Representing ‘Terrorist Detainees’? – TPMMuckraker

The campaign-style ad from Cheney’s Keep America Safe dubs the lawyers “the Al Qaeda Seven” and asks, “Whose values do they share?” while flashing a picture of Osama bin Laden.

At issue are DOJ lawyers who, before they joined the administration, represented detainees at Guantanamo, filed amicus briefs in detainee-related cases, or were involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.

The names of two of the officials, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal and National Security Division Attorney Jennifer Daskal are known. But Republicans have seized on the fact that the DOJ isn’t releasing the names of seven other officials who fit that description. Thus, the “the Al Qaeda Seven.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

The critics are not only questioning the loyalty of top lawyers in the Obama Administration, but are also attacking the age-old and thoroughly American practice of lawyers defending clients with whose ideology they may not agree (see Adams, John).

Katyal represented Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver, in the landmark case that led to the overturning the Bush Administration’s military commissions. As senior counsel for Human Rights Watch, Daskal worked on detainee issues.

A professor at Georgetown, Katyal became one of the most celebrated young lawyers in the country after arguing — and winning — the Hamdan case before the Supreme Court.

The attack began at a Nov. 18 Judiciary Committee hearing. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, raised the issue with Attorney General Eric Holder, asserting that Katyal and Daskal have a conflict of interest. A couple weeks later, Grassley and the other committee Republicans asked the DOJ to produce a list of names of officials who previously worked with detainees. The department responded Feb. 18 with a letter from one of Holder’s deputies that said nine officials fit Grassley’s criteria. But the letter did not give the names.

The Republicans reiterated their demand for a list of names in a new letter on Feb. 26.

In the meantime, the interest in the story heated up in the right-wing media and spilled over into the mainstream. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York seized on the DOJ’s response to Grassley. National Review and the Weekly Standard got on the case. Michelle Malkin raged at “Corruptocrat AG Eric Holder.” Investor’s Business Daily published an editorial titled “Department of Jihad.”

Finally, on Feb. 26, ABC picked up the story.

Today, the Web ad from Keep America Safe, which Liz Cheney founded as an outlet to advance her agenda last October, was featured on Politico. The Weekly Standard blogger Michael Goldfarb, who works at lobbying firm Orion Strategies and is also Keep America Safe’s spokesman, told Politico: “Holder has hired lawyers who used to represent terrorists to work in President Obama’s Justice Department, and he won’t tell the American people who they are.”

Despite the heated rhetoric (Grassley claimed that the DOJ officials’ past work “creates a conflict of interest problem”), legal ethics experts say there is no ethical breach.

“It is not a conflict of interest under the rules of any U.S. jurisdiction for a government lawyer who has represented detainees in private practice to work on detainee issues at the Justice Department.,” Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU Law school, said in an e-mail.

“Under U.S. legal ethics rules in every state, this is no different from hiring an antitrust lawyer, a criminal defense lawyer, or an environmental lawyer from private practice to work in the same general area of law for the government,” Gillers said. “They, and a lawyer who has represented detainees, can work in the same field for government so long as they stay away from the specific matters on which they worked in private life.”

The Justice Department said in its letter to Grassley that political appointees recuse themselves from particular cases in which they were previously involved.

Judiciary Committee Democrats have so far been silent on the issue. Press secretaries for several top Judiciary Dems did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

But some liberals who work on national security issues are outraged.

“It’s not kind of like McCarthyism, it is exactly what Joe McCarthy did with his Communist witch hunts,” Ken Gude of the Center for American Progress says in an e-mail. “Cheney accuses the Attorney General of the United States of being a supporter of al Qaeda and running the ‘Department of Jihad,’” a reference to the Investor’s Business Daily editorial that is featured in the Cheney ad.

Original Article: Anatomy Of A Smear: Cheney Attacks DOJ Attorneys As Terrorist-Friendly (VIDEO) – TPMMuckraker

“I really don’t have this feeling about her as being presidential,” Tancredo said. “I don’t know what it is exactly. I don’t know if the issues really are that difficult for her or not.”

He questions if she has what it takes, and whether she really wants it. “As governor of the state of Alaska, she doesn’t have all that kind of experience. She can get better. But I don’t know if she is really looking to do it.’’

It could all be a commercial thing, just a way to sell books?

“Sure. Make a lot of money and stay in the mix. I think that’s a great idea.’’

John McCain has brought over his former running mate to campaign for him in Arizona, where the Tea Party movement is challenging his seat in the Senate.

She will campaign against J.D. Hayworth, a friend of yours who is on your side in the immigration debate. What does that tell you about Palin?

“That tells me she is a Republican. I am not. I mean, I am a member of that party and that will always stay that way. But to me it’s only a mechanism, a way to get on the ballot and all that. But she is a real Republican.’’

Tancredo’s unlikely to ever re-enter electoral politics, but he remains a hero to a segment of the GOP base that overlaps with Palin’s base.

Original Article: Tancredo on Palin: ‘I Really Don’t Have This Feeling About Her as Being Presidential’ – Washington Independent