'It's Like They're Bringing al Qaeda Lawyers Inside the Department of Justice'

The most honest, ethical, transparent administration ever, blah blah blah.

The Justice Department's disclosure that nine of President Obama's appointees had either represented or advocated for Guantanamo detainees has touched off a firestorm of criticism.

The surprising admission came three months after Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa asked Attorney General Eric Holder for a list of names of Obama DOJ appointees who had been involved in legal work for Gitmo prisoners.

Holder, in a letter to Grassley, admitted that nine of the agency's appointees had done some kind of work on behalf of terror suspects.

"To the best of our knowledge, during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees in those components represented detainees," said Holder in the letter, which is dated Feb. 18.

Only five? Why, I feel better now know only five of Obama's appointees represented these monsters. Now if it were, say, six or seven, then I might have a problem with this insanity.

"Four others either contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases or were otherwise involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees."

Holder refused to reveal the names of any of the DOJ lawyers who worked on behalf of terrorists or their positions in the department, except for two officials whose advocacy for Gitmo detainees had already been reported.

Neal Katyal, the department's principal deputy solicitor general, was once the lawyer for Osama bin Laden's driver. Jennifer Daskal, part of Obama's Detention Policy Task Force, advocated for detainees at Human Rights Watch.

Nice to see we have terrorist advocates in or Justice Department, huh?

But the revelation that the DOJ had staffers who had once backed America's enemies left many critics fuming.

"It's like they're bringing al Qaeda lawyers inside the Department of Justice," said Debra Burlingame, who lost her brother on 9/11 and a board member of the advocacy group Keep America Safe.

Long Island GOP Rep. Peter King said he was perplexed why Holder didn't reveal the names of appointees who had worked for terrorists.

A DOJ rep reiterated that no ethics codes were broken.

"The department's attorneys are subject to ethics and disclosure rules . . . which are the strongest in history," said spokesman Matthew Miller.

It's historic!

If the disclosure rules are so strong, how come we don't know their names? We pay their salaries so we deserve to know who these people are.

Activist Morons 'Deeply Concerned' Over Bali Bomber Executions

I've got your deep concern right here.

A MAJOR international human rights group today called on Indonesia's president to commute the death sentences of the three Islamic militants responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the death penalty was not an appropriate punishment for the three, despite condemning the terrorist attacks as "horrific and inexcusable acts".

It has written an open letter to Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono urging him to halt the executions.

"We write to urge you to commute the death sentences of Amrozi bin H. Nurhasyim, Ali Ghufron (aka Mukhlas), and Imam Samudera, three men who are facing imminent execution," Human Rights Watch wrote.

Indonesian officials last week announced the three men will face a firing squad over the attacks in early November.
...
It said Indonesia was a party to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights which prohibits the use of retroactive criminal laws.

"We also note that there is no clear evidence that the application of the death penalty serves as a more effective deterrent against criminal activity than other forms of punishment."

The human rights group said it was "deeply concerned" Indonesia had recently begun increasing the rate of executions, contrary to a global trend against the use of the death penalty.

Yawn.

Spanking in Schools: Minorities Hardest Hit

Honestly, I didn't even realize kids got the paddle any more. All I know is when I was a Catholic school youth, the idea of getting my ass whupped was enough to make me keep my mouth shut.

Apparently though, kids are still getting spanked, mostly in the south. But really, do we need a study from Human Rights Watch over this? Aren't there more pressing human rights violations elsewhere in the world? (Hint: look in Muslim countries).

Paddlings, swats, licks. A quarter of a million schoolchildren got them in 2007 — and black children, American Indians and kids with disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment, according to a study by a human rights group.
...
African American students are more than twice as likely to be paddled. The disparity persists even in places with large black populations, the study found. Similarly, Native Americans were more than twice as likely to be paddled, the study found.

Naturally, the story fails the point out what is likely the case: Those dispensing punishment to minority children are likely minorities themselves.

What white teacher in his or her right mind is going to paddle a black child and risk persecution for being racist?

Heartbreaking: Club Gitmo Guests 'At Risk'

Just don't know how much more of this mental anguish I can take. I may just have to go buy another one of those world's smallest violins.

MORE than two-thirds of the detainees in the Guantanamo Bay prison are suffering from or at risk of mental problems because they are kept isolated in small cells with little light or fresh air, according to Human Rights Watch.

In a report entitled 'Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo', the group says 185 of the 270 detainees at the US military prison for terrorism suspects are housed in facilities similar to "supermax" prisons.

They spend 22 hours alone in cramped cells, have very limited contact with other human beings and are given little more than the Koran to occupy themselves, said the report, which is based interviews with government officials and lawyers.

Detainees held in this manner include many who have not been charged with crimes and have already been cleared for release or transfer, according to the report.

"Guantanamo detainees who have not even been charged with a crime are being warehoused in conditions that are in many ways harsher than those reserved for the most dangerous, convicted criminals in the United States," said senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch Jennifer Daskal.

Don't worry, Jennifer, Barack Obama will make it all OK.

Islamic Jihad Using Torture, Jimmy Carter Unavailable for Comment

For years any allegation that the United States has used certain methods of interrogation on terror suspects has been met with wails about waterboarding and worldwide condemnation from every lefttist group known to man.

Now that Human Rights Watch accuses an offshoot of the Jimmy Carter supported terror gang Hamas of torturing men they accuse of collaborating with Israel, the news is met with silence.

Human Rights Watch has urged the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip to investigate the abduction and alleged torture of three Palestinians by an Islamist militant group that accused them of spying for Israel.

The three were seized on May 20 by Islamic Jihad, which said they had helped Israeli forces kill several militants, including one of its leaders. After making taped confessions, the men were handed over to the Hamas-run Interior Ministry for prosecution.

A ministry spokesman, Ehab al-Ghsain, said the detainees bore signs of torture. Islamic Jihad denied having abused them.

The New York-based rights group issued a statement on Friday calling on Hamas, which took over Gaza a year ago after routing the forces of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to exercise sole responsibility for law enforcement.

"An armed group like (Islamic Jihad's) al-Quds Brigades has no legal right to arrest, detain or interrogate suspects," said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division.

"The Hamas authorities in Gaza, who control the governing institutions there, have a duty to prosecute those responsible for these abductions and apparent use of torture," Stork said.

Hamas should charge the three suspected spies "with a recognisable criminal offence and try them in accordance with international standards" or free them, Human Rights Watch added.

Ghsain said Hamas had rebuked Islamic Jihad over the abductions, but no legal action against the group was planned.

You can bet your ass these guys suffered much more than any of the three terrorists we used waterboarding on.

Terror Suspects: Send Us Back to Club Gitmo

For all the bleating and whining over alleged abuses at Guantanamo Bay, the terror swine incarcerated there is treated better and more humanely than in most of the countries they're repatriated to, with the latest case highlighted by Human Rights Watch in a report released today.

US: Don't Send Guantanamo Detainees Home to Torture and Abuse

Authorities in Tunisia mistreated two former Guantanamo detainees who were sent home in June despite Tunisia's pledge to the US government that it would treat them humanely, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Tunisian government is now holding both men, Abdullah al-Hajji Ben Amor and Lotfi Lagha, in prison; the men have told those who visit them that things are so bad they would rather be in Guantanamo, Human Rights Watch said.

Of course, the notion they're treated better in Guantanamo still seems to escape one HRW nincompoop.

"Closing Guantanamo provides the United States one of the best opportunities to help rebuild its moral authority and international good will," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch. "Washington should not squander that chance by forcibly repatriating detainees to countries with known records of torture and abuse."

OK, so we should close Club Gitmo, according to Daskal. But if we do, these scumbags go back to a place even worse. Wouldn't it make sense to keep these beasts locked up there, where they're receiving better than average treatment?

The 43-page report, "Ill-fated Homecomings: A Tunisian Case Study of Guantanamo Repatriations," describes the experiences of the two Tunisians returned home 11 weeks ago and urges the US government to set up a process that would give detainees advance notice of their transfer, and allow them the opportunity to contest it before a federal court if they fear torture or ill-treatment upon return to their home countries.

Ten Tunisian detainees remain at Guantanamo, and at least eight of them were convicted in Tunisia of crimes in absentia.

On June 18, US authorities flew al-Hajji, a 51-year-old father of eight, and Lagha, a 38-year-old from a remote village in southern Tunisia, from Guantanamo to Tunis and handed them over to the Tunisian security forces. The US had held both men in Guantanamo for approximately five years without ever charging either with a crime.

During the last week of July, two Human Rights Watch researchers traveled to Tunisia to investigate the fate of these two men. While authorities declined Human Rights Watch's request to meet with the detainees, the researchers talked to their lawyer and family members who have visited them.

Al-Hajji told his lawyer that he spent his first two days back in Tunisia at the Ministry of Interior, where Tunisian security officials slapped him, threatened him with the rape of his wife and daughters, shook him awake every time he started to sleep, and coerced him into signing a paper he could not read because he needs new glasses. After signing the statement, Tunisian authorities took al-Hajji to the military court that had convicted him in absentia in 1995 on charges of participating in a foreign terrorist organization abroad.

Just imagine the howls if any of the alleged treatment were perpetrated by the U.S. Of course, lack of such treatment never stopped many of the left from just fabricating abuses anyway.

An example of what purportedly occurs in Tunisia.

Detainees report a range of methods of physical and mental forms of torture and ill-treatment. Most common, according to human rights lawyers and organizations, are sleep deprivation; threats to rape the detainee or women family members; beatings, especially on the soles of the feet (falaka), using fists, kicks, and sometimes clubs or electric cables; and tying and suspending detainees from the ceiling or in the “roast chicken” (poulet rôti ) position, either while fully or nearly naked, from a rod that is supported by a table at each end.

Just imagine the cauterwauling from the left if we did any of that.

Previously: Gitmo Still Open For Business

Saudis to Behead Teenage Girl

Ah, the joys of Islam.

Teenage Girl Faces Beheading in Saudi Arabia

The family of a 19-year-old Sri Lankan girl is pleading for her life after a Saudi Arabian court sentenced her to death by beheading.

The court found Rizana Nafeek, 19, guilty of murdering a child in her care while working in the country. Her family (Nafeek's parents pictured above) has appealed the sentence, and human rights groups are calling for the Saudi government to overturn it.

At 17, Rizana Nafeek was sent to Saudi Arabia after the tsunami to work as a maid and make money for her family in Sri Lanka. But after only a few weeks and no child care training, her employers put her in charge of their 4-month-old baby. The baby died, and Nafeek was charged with murder, tried without an attorney and sentenced to death.

Nisha Varia of Human Rights Watch says the case is the latest egregious example of the harsh conditions migrant workers face in Saudi Arabia.

"This case raises many troubling questions about the treatment of children and foreigners in Saudi Arabia's criminal justice system," says Varia. "Foreigners simply do not receive the same treatment in the Saudi justice system. This includes having translation during the interrogation and during court proceedings and having an attorney."

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Saudi-funded unindicted co-conspirators at CAIR, was unavailable for comment.

Gitmo Still Open For Business

Much to the consternation of Farah Stockman at the Boston Globe, Guantanamo Bay remains open for business and is taking in new clients. This, of course, does not go over well with the media lapdogs who specialize in printing press releases from terrorist-loving "human rights" groups.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has transferred three suspected terrorists to the Guantanamo Bay prison since March, despite recent legal setbacks and President Bush's statement that he would like to close the controversial facility.

Other than leftwing agitators, exactly who is Gitmo controversial with? Stockman doesn't elaborate.

The three detainees are the first to arrive in Guantanamo Bay since 2004, with the exception of those who were abruptly transferred last fall when Bush closed secret CIA prisons in Europe after their existence became known. Two of the recent transfers were captured in a sweeping counterterrorism operation in Somalia. The third is Iraqi.

Secret prisons that were secret, until the media divulged their existence, that is.

The lack of new arrivals -- and the large number of detainees who were being sent home -- had led many human rights advocates to believe the Guantanamo Bay prison was being phased out amid widespread international outrage.

Again, manusfactured outrage fomented by the left, who clearly are not rooting for America to win in the war on terrorists.

But now, new detainees are arriving and the flow of releases has slowed significantly -- from 102 last year to 15 this year.

"It's like Guantanamo is getting its second wind, and becoming a permanent option," said Joanne Mariner, director of the Terrorism and Counterterrorism Program at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights organization.

Some legal advocates for detainees expressed concern that the prison is being used for detainees from the Somali operation.

"Rather than closing Guantanamo, they are using it for the next phase, in another front in the war on terror," said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based law institute that focuses on justice and democracy. "It shows that the administration still believes Guantanamo is a viable way to hold people indefinitely without due process.

Why is it we rarely, if ever, hear about human rights on the rest of the island of Cuba?

39 Mutants "Disappear"

Let's all fret and worry that 39 creatures are alleged to have disappeared.

Have the "human rights" groups checked any caves in Waziristan?

Six human rights groups urged the U.S. government on Thursday to name and explain the whereabouts of 39 people they said were believed to have been held in U.S. custody and "disappeared."

The groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, said they filed a U.S. federal lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act seeking information about the 39 people it terms "ghost prisoners" in the U.S. "war on terror."

"Since the end of Latin America's dirty wars, the world has rejected the use of 'disappearances' as a fundamental violation of international law," professor Meg Satterthwaite of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University's School of Law said in a statement.

UPDATE: Also at Pat Dollard.

Guardian Weighs In On Danny Glover's New Best Friend

Whoever it is that's doctoring the water at al-Guardian, keep up the good work.

The closure of Venezuela's popular, independent television channel RCTV signals a move towards authoritarianism for Hugo Chavez's regime.

I'd call it confirmation, but al-Guardian has taken a step in the right direction.

For the past week Venezuela's streets have filled with rage against the demise of a television channel. Thousands of university students have taken to blowing whistles, banging pots and playing air raid sirens. Barricades have been erected, fires lit and rocks thrown. The police have responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and mass arrests. Around the world, watching the bedlam, governments, commentators and activists have wondered: is President Hugo Chavez crushing free speech?

But . . . but . . . he's a Hero of the Revolution and . . . and . . . he was so-o-o-o nice to Mama Moonbat, too!

It is an explosive question. If the answer is yes, many of the social progressives who embrace the Venezuelan leader as an exciting and charismatic challenger to George Bush would be disillusioned. If the answer is no, they can take heart that their champion's democratic credentials remain intact and that his revolution is on track.

The Chilean senate, the European Union, the US administration and a host of non-governmental organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders, have expressed varying degrees of concern about the implications for free speech in Venezuela.

What? No Media Matters? Papa Soros won't allow a second front group to go against Komrade Hugo??

The tens of thousands of people who demonstrated in the capital Caracas and several other cities tended to put it more strongly. "We have to make a stand," a teenage girl shouted in Plaza Brion, her face coated in sweat and grime from a smouldering barricade. "Otherwise we're on the road to communist dictatorship, to Cuba." The staff of RCTV were just as dramatic. "This is the end of democracy in Venezuela," said Moirah Sanchez, a lawyer for the channel.

But just as you begin to believe that al-Guardian is serious about ridding itself of nitwits . . .

But its fate should not be equated with democracy's. Chavez has won three consecutive landslides since being elected in 1998 and remains extremely popular, largely for converting oil revenues into cheap food, free medical care and other social programmes aimed at the poor majority.

Nonetheless, Koslamistan's Propaganda Ministry is silent.

As is the DNC, Shrillary, Obama, Kucinich, Schmuck Schumer and presidential front-runner Ron Paul.

Egypt Arrests 80 Radicals

Another one of those good news, bad news deals. The good news is they know who these guys are. The bad news is they'll probably be out in no time.

Egyptian security forces detained 80 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday in sweeps at dawn, intensifying a clampdown against the government's most powerful political rival.

The government focused its arrests in Cairo and the Nile Delta, where the Islamist movement has a strong popular base, and the group said those detained included the office managers of three Brotherhood members of parliament.

Security sources said the men were arrested on charges of belonging to an outlawed group and possessing anti-government literature. The Brotherhood, which operates openly despite being officially banned, is Egypt's most powerful opposition group.

The Brotherhood condemned the sweeps as an attempt to reduce its clout ahead of elections for the upper house of parliament in April, in which it is widely expected to take part. The group won a fifth of the seats in the lower house in 2005.

I wonder what these guys have to worry about? They have useful idiots from this country agitating on their behalf.

The new arrests came as U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called on Egypt to free hundreds of Brotherhood members it said were detained "solely for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association."

In an escalation against the Brotherhood, Egypt referred 40 members of the group including third-in-command Khairat el-Shatir a week ago for trial in military courts, where verdicts are often issued quickly and cannot be appealed.

Those men, who face terrorism and money-laundering charges, will be the first Brotherhood members to face military trials since 2001. The Islamist group, which says it rejects violence, has said it was preparing for a tough legal fight.

"By trying to crush Egypt's largest opposition movement, the government has shown once again that it cannot tolerate any criticism," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.