Of COURSE Blumenthal Is Running against Civilian Law

Gregg has a post up expressing shock that Richard Blumenthal, CT’s craven Attorney General running to replace Chris Dodd, advocated against using civilian law for both Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the UndieBomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Gregg argues that Blumenthal’s stance (on this issue and on opposition to Bernanke’s reconfirmation) is directly counter to the Administration’s policy.

To which I’d respond in two ways.

  • Of course he’s running against civilian law.
  • It’s not so clear his stance on civilian law (as opposed to Ben Bernanke) is “completely counter to the position of the administration.”

Here’s a big chunk from Gregg’s post:

But listen to what comes next—listen to this relative non sequitur that Blumenthal volunteers without a prompting question:

I’m determined to chart my own course in Washington, different in many respects from the Administration. I’ve taken the position that the trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed should be in a military tribunal away from the United States, or, I’m sorry, away from New York and New Haven, and on a number of other issues, for example opposing the reconfirmation of Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve, I have charted my own course, I’m prepared to do it, and issue-by-issue debate either side in what I think is the right thing to do.

What this attorney general and former US attorney has to say about who supposedly is and is not entitled to their rights is pretty shocking,

[snip]

Yet, just over a year after the inauguration of this theoretically still popular president, the candidate for US Senate in Connecticut just went out of his way to distance himself from the White House on two hot issues—a civil trial for KSM and the reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Fed Chair.

But wait, there’s more.

Blumenthal was next asked about whether Christmas crotch-bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should have been brought into the US criminal process, and the question turned to Miranda rights (I apologize in advance for the meandering quote, but I want to give the entire context):

Let’s talk in real terms about what Mirandizing means. It means reading somebody their rights as opposed to simply interrogating them. I think there’s a general consensus now that in that instance there may have been no real need to read Miranda rights before some interrogation took place. And, in my view, with a terrorist, with our nation potentially at risk, interrogation should be pursued, and the consequences may be that some evidence may be inadmissible, but there is obviously in that case, overwhelming evidence without whatever may be gained or gleaned from the interrogation. So, bottom line, interrogation should have been pursued by a specially trained group of agents without necessarily a lawyer being present, and if at some point there was diminished usefulness to the interrogation, other criminal interrogation should have been applied perhaps by other authorities.

Yes, this is utter garbage—in terms of what actually happened to Abdulmutallab, what Miranda rights actually are, and who is entitled to them by law—but stick with me:

Very often the reading of rights diminishes the usefulness of subsequent interrogation, the reason being simply that the defendant chooses to have a lawyer present, or chooses to cease talking. And I would have pursued the interrogation without the Miranda rights because I believe that the usefulness of learning about contacts from Yemen and elsewhere in the world and potential immediate attacks that may be known to this individual outweigh the benefits of having that at the trial

Yes, more inaccuracies and inanities in search of a position, so questioner Lehrer wanted to clarify, should Abdulmutallab be tried in civilian court? “Probably not in criminal court,” says Blumenthal.

Stupid, yes, but importantly here, also completely counter to the position of the administration of a president still thought popular in Dick’s state.

Now, as I suggested, it should surprise no one that a “finger-in-the-wind” politician like Blumenthal is taking this stance against civilian law.

As I pointed out earlier this week, Scott Brown says he won in MA (which is slightly to the left of CT, if you look at it from my perspective) because he ran against civilian law.

Republicans discovered the renewed power of terrorism in last month’s special Senate election in Massachusetts. Neil Newhouse, the pollster for the Republican victor, Scott Brown, said voters responded to the way Mr. Brown framed the issue, supporting him 63 percent to 26 percent when told he favored charging suspected terrorists as enemy combatants in a military tribunal while his Democratic opponent would give them constitutional rights and a civilian trial.

“This moved voters more than the health care issue did,” Mr. Newhouse said. “The terrorism stuff resonated, and it wasn’t just from the advertising we did.” [my emphasis]

Scott Brown’s pollster found that MA voters–voting to replace Ted Kennedy, of all people!!!–were more than twice as likely to support Brown for advocating against civilian law than Martha Coakley, the AG from the state next door to Blumenthal’s, who supported it. Scott Brown won at least partly because he trashed civilian law (he even went so far as to endorse water-boarding explicitly, in MA, and still won).

And, as I also pointed out this week, in response to the lesson they took from the Brown win, Republicans are running hard against civilian law. “If this approach of putting these people in U.S. courts doesn’t sell in Massachusetts, I don’t know where it sells,” Mitch McConnell told someone at a Heritage event on February 3. He went on to say, “You can campaign on these issues anywhere in America.”

Now, I agree with Mitch McConnell on approximately nothing policy-wise. But he’s a smarter politician than a lot of guys on our side. And he, at least, believes “you can campaign” against civilian law “anywhere in the country.” Including Massachusetts. And, presumably, Connecticut.

Which might explain why craven politicians like Richard Blumenthal are doing just that.

Now, onto my second point, Gregg’s suggestion that Blumenthal, by campaigning against civilian law, is campaigning “completely counter to the position of the administration of a president still thought popular in Dick’s state.”

Is he?

After all, the White House was as heavy-handed in chasing Chris Dodd from this race–and finding a replacement–as they were in chasing candidates out of Michigan and Colorado’s gubernatorial races. The White House has been intimately involved in this race. And the two guys at the White House who are likely most involved in this race–Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod–are also the two guys who are at this moment dealing away civilian law like it’s some kind of frivolous earmark only an insider would care about.

So while the guy in charge of our civilian legal system, Eric Holder, may cling to support of civilian law (though he appears to be ready to sacrifice that fight, anyway, at least in the case of KSM), the guys most involved in this race almost certainly don’t give a shit about civilian law, and instead consider it as annoying as a pack of geese threatening to take down Obama’s 747 full of more important (according to Rahm and Axe) agenda items.

So the lesson I would take from Blumenthal’s craven disavowal of civilian law is not (just) that he’s a craven politician. It’s that the guys in charge of politics at the White House not only don’t have the stomach for explaining why civilian law is a better solution for both Abdulmutallab and KSM, but also that they’re willing to accept the Republicans’ framing of this issue.

Update: post organization tweaked and expanded slightly.

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  1. Leen says:

    Mitch McConnell ““You can campaign on these issues anywhere in America.”

    Fueling hatred and fear are obviously powerful tools and the Republicans are not afraid to be as destructive and negative as they have determined that need to be to win. Their voting records are not going to get them votes so use fear.

    From the reading that I did about the Brown win. Sounds like a combination of fear mongering, big white handsome guy in truck fuels hatred and fear, along with Coakley’s poor camapaigning (he attended some public events to Coakley attending 19), her pro choice stance as well as right wing radio that went all out in Mass hammering Coakley.

    I think Ted Kennedy was able to keep the lid on the racism and bigotry that still exist in parts of Boston and other part of Mass. (veiled racism against Obama)

    • emptywheel says:

      Coakley’s pro-choice stance isn’t what killed her. It’s that the first thing she would have done in Congress would be to vote for Bad Nelson’s amendment gutting choice. Her people stayed home. The people who voted watch way too much 24.

      • Leen says:

        What I am saying is that it was a combination of issues.

        Read that 51% of voters in Mass are independents. And that 75% of white, highest level in education 12th grade folks went with Brown. Similar numbers in the Virginia, New Jersey races for Governors.

        The Republicans are working this crowd hard

        • CTMET says:

          I had to look to see if anyone else was running in CT. It seems that Merrick Alpert is running

          Just one quote from his site:

          “I am more interested in rebuilding Connecticut than Kabul.”

          Having been on the ground as a U.S. peacekeeper in a Muslim nation, I have a firsthand understanding of what works and what doesn’t work

          Increasing the size of the American presence in Afghanistan is a mistake

          Deploying American troops to Afghanistan, or anywhere else abroad, should only be done if there is a vital national interest at stake, if all political, economic, and diplomatic means are first exhausted, if we have a clear and articulated goal, and if that goal can be achieved with the forces we have available in a reasonable time frame

          Our deployment to Afghanistan does not meet the tests for deployment abroad

          Money spent in Afghanistan can be put to better use here in Connecticut

          http://merrickforachange.com/

          • Leen says:

            thanks

            Merrick on Health Care
            It’s a disgrace that 46 million people in America do not have health insurance. We, as a country, are better than that. Access to quality health care is a right and not a privilege. Everyone should have access to prenatal care, pediatric care and basic preventive medicine. We need to provide cradle to grave health care coverage. This does not mean that everyone should be covered under a single-payer, government-controlled health plan. Rather, it means private health care working in conjunction with government health care to provide full coverage to all

      • BayStateLibrul says:

        Stay-at-home Dems, and Dems who wanted to send “smoke-signals” to DC

        on health care.

        Voting for the opposite party to send a message, in my opinion, sucks.

  2. onwatch says:

    I feel like it is time to leave this country, it seems generationally lost, and I do not have enough time left in my life to help fix it. It needs so so much work. Thank you Speaker Gingrich and W Bush.

  3. Leen says:

    over at Democratic underground

    I’ve been writing a lot about the role Fox News and the right wing noise machine played in getting Scott Brown elected in Massachusetts. Margery Eagan, a Boston Herald reporter (who supported Coakley) told Howard Kurtz that right-wing talk radio and sports talk radio demonized Martha Coakley endlessly. This was a big part of her fall after she held a 31-point lead in MA.

    CNN’s Reliable Sources:

    On Boston newspapers’ coverage of the Massachusetts Senate race

    EAGAN: Well, she got very good press from “The Boston Globe,” not from my paper, “The Boston Herald.” But you know something? People don’t like — TV journalists and newspaper journalists do not like to talk about the influence of talk radio. Let me tell you something. There was a nonstop hammering of Martha Coakley on the AM stations here, on the huge sports stations here. She was the evil incarnate and Scott Brown was the next coming. And, you know, the New England Patriots in the playoffs lost early on. It was as if there was this transference from Tom “Terrific” Brady, the quarterback of the Patriots, to Scott “Terrific” Brown. You look at the rallies for Scott Brown, they were very white, they were very suburban, they were Gillette Stadium fans, and there was almost this…

  4. JohnLopresti says:

    …can campaign on these… There was a poll in 2009 which couched the torture question narrowly in terms of approving inhumane treatment only for the subset of arrested persons who are terrorism-accused. Result was approval by 3/5 of republicans, 2/5 of democrats; independents and other parties not in survey; disaffected, unregistered, not in survey. It looks like McConnell …can campaign…successfully on **these issue(s)** to about 1/3 of the population, but only as a wedge issue, and provided one is willing to dismantle several millenia of development of modern humane jurisprudence. That is where the republican party is headed in their recruitment campaign to find yet another fringe element to vote for republicans; then convert civil society into an aggregate of trogolodytic, rough hewn misfits freshly emerged from a recent past as hunter gatherers whose prime rule is survival of the fittest. Somewhat less stellar than aspiring to, say, the oath of Hippocrates; but, republicans have set the bar pretty low here; ain*t campaigning to attract folks with morals or ethics. Once the republicans have that target audience in their voter rolls, ?how does the republican continue to develop ideas germane to developing modern civil society? I doubt republicans of this new stripe care about the large picture, only the rally and the harangue.

  5. earlofhuntingdon says:

    Nice, nuanced correction to Gregg’s post. Blumenthal’s position is almost certainly exactly how Emanuel and his White House want to play down the rule of law in favor of unrestrained executive power. It also gives them more cover for their hear, speak and see no evil posture when it comes to their own or Bush era legal excesses.

    Remind me again what subject Mr. Obama studied in graduate school.

  6. Leen says:

    Ew “. And the two guys at the White House who are likely most involved in this race–Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod–are also the two guys who are at this moment dealing away civilian law like it’s some kind of frivolous earmark only an insider would care about.

    So while the guy in charge of our civilian legal system, Eric Holder, may cling to support of civilian law (though he appears to be ready to sacrifice that fight, anyway, at least in the case of KSM), the guys most involved in this race almost certainly don’t give a shit about civilian law, and instead consider it as annoying as a pack of geese threatening to take down Obama’s 747 full of more important (according to Rahm and Axe) agenda items.

    So the lesson I would take from Blumenthal’s craven disavowal of civilian law is not (just) that he’s a craven politician. It’s that the guys in charge of politics at the White House not only don’t have the stomach for explaining why civilian law is a better solution for both Abdulmutallab and KSM, but also that they’re willing to accept the Republicans’ framing of this issue.”
    —————————————————————-

    Emmanuel and Axelrod need to step out of their bubble and into the streets more. Americans are depressed about the direction that the country went during the last eight years. While many Americans may not be able to be specific about exactly what their concerns are besides the most evident jobs and health care. That unnecessary war in Iraq, the torture that has taken place is eating at the alleged core values of this country.

    There are a bunch of 20 somethings who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan sitting at bar stools across this nation trying to drown what they did in those countries based on lies.

    The smell of a rotting democracy is strong if you step onto the streets…amazed that Rahm and Axelrod are unable to smell it.

    Not backing up Holder on the rule of law issues only adds to the rot.

  7. HanTran says:

    You really ought to know more about RB before attacking him.

    Yes he is a mixed bag but ware we now setting up a Purity Test for D candidates?

    He is certainly better than any of the blue dogs and will like support many positions that liberals hold dear.

    Lets stop eating our own.

    • bmaz says:

      My problem with Blumenthal is that the only times he seems interested in the law are when it can conveniently provide a platform for his own preening, political and otherwise. It is not a purity test, I just don’t think that much of him and think Marcy’s term craven is fairly accurate.

  8. Leen says:

    Just wondering why those pushing for civilian versus military courts are not repeating the message that the U.S. must live up to it’s claim of abiding by it’s own laws and constitution. Why not keep hammering away at WE MUST SET THE TONE (we all ready have invasions based on lies, torture) You know the “we must lead the way” Stand by the “rule of law” hogwash.

    “Be an example to the world”

    Even if they know this is not true why aren’t they hammering away with that ‘we must be an example to the world” strategy.

  9. earlofhuntingdon says:

    “Our own” does not Harold Ford or Joe Lieberman wannabes. We need more Sherrod Brown’s and Alan Grayson’s.

  10. Teddy Partridge says:

    Blumenthal watched a very popular AG from next door lose to a pro-waterboarder. That’s got to scare any Democrat — especially since any smart Democrat can tell that Obama would rather run against a do-nothing GOP Congress in 2012 than expend any effort defeating that wrestling lady this fall.

      • greenharper says:

        1) Coakley was perhaps not so popular. She signed Mass. on to the friend of the court brief in the Supreme Court case of Wood v. Allen last September. It was out of Alabama.

        The defendant was found guilty of murdering his girlfriend. Freshly-minted defense lawyer failed to introduce evidence of his client’s mental impairment: an IQ in the 60s. About 31 other Attorneys General signed the brief, all but two from death penalty states.

        Many in my state who care about civil liberties were appalled that Coakley wanted to close the federal courthouse door to defendants who don’t receive justice in state court.

        We have a case here, in Northampton — Jason Vassell — in which the local DA is prosecuting a UMass pre-med who defended himself against an unprovoked attack, in his own dormitory, by two drunken, out-of-town strangers who objected that Vassell is black.

        That Vassell was charged at all is a terrible miscarriage of justice. Does Coakley want to make sure that, if Vassell is convicted, he’ll never reach federal court? I have to wonder, and am probably not alone.

        Unfortunately, she’s running again for AG and is unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

        Also, re Coakley’s defeat, I’m told that union members supported Brown 2-1 in some areas after Obama came out for taxing medical benefits.

        I don’t discount those who fried their humanity by watching too much “24.”

        But these additional factors — Coakley’s civil liberties fail, and Obama’s public support for taxing employer-provided health insurance — in my view count, as well.

        • emptywheel says:

          Agree, they do count.

          Hadn’t heard the story about Vassell. And yet Amherst still went for her by a bigger margin than anywhere, followed not far behind by Northampton. You think that’s a town gown thing (that is, that it was perceived to by just a UMASS thing)?

        • skdadl says:

          I don’t discount those who fried their humanity by watching too much “24.”

          Somewhere in heaven, Tommy Douglas (father of medicare in Canada and legitimately voted greatest Canadian a couple of years ago in a serious poll) is weeping. Kiefer Sutherland is his grandson, and appears otherwise to be very progressive politically, in the family tradition. No one understands this.

  11. belewlaw says:

    Alan Simpson once said that there are two parties in America, the Evil Party and the Stupid Party. (He claimed to belong to the Stupid Party). In times of risk people choose Evil over Stupid because they perceive Evil as stronger than Stupid.

    The Republicans (who IMO are both Evil and Stupid) have done a good job of selling themselves as the party of common sense and toughness. They have done an equally good job of portraying Democrats as naive and feckless.

    Democrats have been handed the tough task of explaining complex problems (Keynesian economics, health care reform). For the most part they have not been doing a very good job of it. In the case of commissions vs courts they have not done an effective job of showing the problems and history of the commissions.

    It is ironic that the surge policy in Iraq and the current strategy in Afghanistan rely on some of the same principles (winning the hearts and minds by using more humane tactics, for example) that support the use of courts rather than commissions.

  12. JasonLeopold says:

    On a somewhat related note, Cheney, both Dick and mini dick, will be on the Sunday shows tomorrow. There’s a preview of Cheney’s talking points up here, which isn’t anything different than what he has said before (why does the media continue to give him this platform?)

    Look for Cheney to argue that we’re a nation at war, with high stakes, and that we can’t win that war by giving KSM a platform in NYC — or by reversing course on policies that kept us safe post-9/11: by planning to close Guantanamo, by investigating and maybe prosecuting CIA officials, by releasing details of the ‘enhanced-interrogation’ program, or by treating terrorists as criminals rather than enemy combatants.

    I thought this response from VandeHei though pretty much says it all when it comes to Cheney’s bullshit about Obama.

    Obama still has not shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention center, or the domestic surveillance program, or the program for trying some terrorists in military tribunals. He extended — not eliminated — the Patriot Act and has secretly used drones to assassinate more terrorists than the Bush administration did. He increased troops in Afghanistan and has not drawn down troops in Iraq any faster than Bush would have if he had another term in office. In this light, it’s hard to see the Cheney caricature of Obama as weak accommodationist who wants to talk his way out of terror threats.

    I would add the possibility of not trying KSM in civilian court too as another

    • JasonLeopold says:

      By the way, I know VandeHei is a Cheney stenographer, but I just meant to point out that Obama/administration has done more to appease critics in areas of national security/counterterrorism than what Cheney has/will accuse him of

        • Teddy Partridge says:

          Actually, I think PoolBoy is pointing out the Cheneys’ error.
          His publication gets too many hits for him to point out their idiocy.