March 28, 2024 / by 

 

Court Dismisses Suit on Constitutionality of Filibuster

Among the hottest issues looking forward to the beginning of the 113th Congress is the status of the filibuster. Will it remain in the status quo of recent decades, the 60 vote Senate roadblock, or will there be movement to return, or at least move closer towards, a majority vote Senate?

One of the more interesting tacts in the filibuster reform fight has been an effort by a group of people, led by Common Cause, and including members of Congress such as Representatives John Lewis, Keith Ellison, Michael Michaud and Hank Johnson, to have the filibuster declared unconstitutional by a federal Article III court. They filed their complaint on May 15th of this year and issued a press release describing their effort.

Very early this morning, the effort came to a screeching halt with an order from the DC District Court dismissing the case pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This decision was, quite unfortunately, absolutely certain to have been made, and today was so ordered by Judge Emmet Sullivan.

The plaintiffs’ goal was described by the court thusly:

They bring this suit against representatives of the United States Senate seeking a declaratory judgment that Rule XXII (the “Cloture Rule” or the “Filibuster Rule”) — which requires a vote of sixty senators to proceed with or close debate on bills or presidential nominations and a two-thirds vote to proceed with or close debate on proposed amendments to the Senate Rules — is unconstitutional because it is “inconsistent with the principle of majority rule.” In the alternative, Plaintiffs challenge Senate Rule V, which provides that the Senate’s rules continue from one Congress to the next, unless amended.

An admirable goal if there ever was one, but, alas, of the Don Quixote nature perhaps. And so the court found. The first cut was on standing, and none of the plaintiffs made it:

First, the Court cannot find that any of the Plaintiffs have standing to sue. Standing is the bedrock requirement of an Article III court’s jurisdiction to resolve only those cases that present live controversies. While the House Members have presented a unique posture, the Court is not persuaded that their alleged injury — vote nullification — falls into a narrow exception enunciated by the Supreme Court in Raines v. Byrd. And none of the other Plaintiffs have demonstrated that this Court can do anything to remedy the alleged harm they have suffered.

But standing was, by traditional justiciability analysis, the least of the plaintiffs’ concerns; the real problem lay in Separation of Powers between the branches and the historical refusal of federal courts to intrude on the Article I legislative prerogative. And so it was viewed by Judge Sullivan:

Second, and no less important, the Court is firmly convinced that to intrude into this area would offend the separation of powers on which the Constitution rests. Nowhere does the Constitution contain express requirements regarding the proper length of, or method for, the Senate to debate proposed legislation. Article I reserves to each House the power to determine the rules of its proceedings. And absent a rule’s violation of an express constraint in the Constitution or an individual’s fundamental rights, the internal proceedings of the Legislative Branch are beyond the jurisdiction of this Court.

For those reasons, Judge Sullivan dismissed the complaint. There has been no announcement yet made as to appeal by Common Cause et. al, but honesty dictates the conclusion that if you cannot get past Emmet Sullivan, you stand no chance whatsoever in the ultra conservative DC Circuit. By the way, by the time this case could hit the DC Circuit, it will be down and vacant four judges, from a slated eleven seats to only seven filled seats, due to the taking of senior status by Chief Judge David Sentelle, and there is little to no movement or concern by Barack Obama on ameliorating the situation.

The concerns of the DC Circuit health aside, the filibuster lawsuit is going nowhere. Remedy for the Senate blockage will have to come from within the Senate itself, pursuant to Senate Rules modification. As Joan McCarter at Daily Kos reported on Monday, there is some evidence Harry Reid would have the 51 votes necessary to get it done.

Let’s hope Harry Reid has the famed pugilistic cajones he likes to claim, and sees to it that the Senate is returned to a functioning body. There are not just the legislative goals that hang in the lurch, but also a full slate of critical Executive Branch nominations for the coming new term for Obama and, of course, the state of emergency in the Federal Judiciary. Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats can solve that if they have the guts. They can expect nothing but spiteful obstructionism from the Senate Republicans after the election and the “fiscal cliff” showdown.

The Democrats need to govern in the absence of a responsible GOP effort to do so. It starts with fixing the filibuster problem.


DiFi and the Silly Season of Senate Committee Music Chairs

A little over an hour ago, there was some rather notable news tweeted out by CNN:

Intel cte’s @SenFeinstein will give up the chair and move to Judiciary, source tells @CapitolHillCNN. @SenatorReid to announce today

I have talked to both sources at both the Senate Judiciary Committee and Personnel offices and have yet to hear a denial. This is, then, significant news as to a complete reshuffling of key Majority Senate Leadership assuming it continues to bear out.

First off, a tenured Senator like Feinstein does not leave a high value Committee Chairmanship without another, or something higher, on the offer. CNN said she it is to “move to Judiciary”. But DiFi has long been a member of the SJC, that can only portend she will then become Chairman of Judiciary.

Ryan Grim at Huffington Post has also picked up this shuffle, and beat me to the punch by a few minutes:

If Feinstein does take over leadership of the Judiciary Committee, that could ease the passage in the Senate of a renewed assault weapons ban, which was passed under President Bill Clinton in 1994 but expired in 2004. The shooting rampage on Friday in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults were murdered by a gunman with a military-style assault weapon and high-capacity magazines, has renewed calls for stricter gun control legislation.

On Tuesday, speaking in the Capitol before the party’s weekly caucus lunch, Feinstein told reporters who had asked her whether she will jump to Judiciary, “Keep tuned. I think it is [going to become open], and I think it’ll happen.”

On Monday, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) who was the chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, passed away at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Now that Inouye’s post is empty, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is rumored to be looking at taking over Appropriations — in turn opening up the leadership slot at Judiciary. Feinstein could then move from her current spot as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee to chair Judiciary.

That is good, fast reporting and coincides with what I can discern. And Appropriations Chair is a long time traditional home for the Senate Pro-Tem, which Pat Leahy became with yesterday’s passing of Inouye.

So, what about SSCI? Next in line would, by seniority, be Jay Rockefeller. But, as Mother Jones’ Nick Baumann pointed out, Rockefeller gave up leadership at Intel nearly three years ago to take over the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee helm, and there is no reason to think he would double back. That gave a brief glimmer of hope that Ron Wyden might get the nod at SSCI, but HuffPo’s Grim, in a tweet, thinks he is more likely to take over the helm of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for the outgoing Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, who did not seek reelection. That would mean the next senior Democrat on SSCI as Barbara Mikulski of Maryland.

Now, if I were Wyden, I would want the SSCI job over Energy. It is likely most progressives would like him there as well, which is why the smart money likely says Reid talks him into the Energy Chair.

So, we are into the Congressional equivalent of Formula One silly season; i.e. the end of the year shuffling of drivers before the season is really over. The one real wildcard here is Wyden.


“Liberal” 9th Circuit Deals Death Blow To Al-Haramain Illegal Wiretapping Accountability Case

There is only one substantive case left in litigation with the ability to bring tangible accountability for the illegal and unconstitutional acts of the Bush/Cheney Administration’s warrantless wiretapping and surveillance program. That case is Al-Haramain v. Bush/Obama. Yes, there is still Clapper v. Amnesty International, but that is a prospective case of a different nature, and was never designed to attack the substantive crimes of the previous Administration.

A little over a couple of hours ago, late morning here in the 9th, the vaunted “most liberal of all Circuit Courts of Appeal”, the Ninth Circuit, drove what may be the final stake in the heart of Al-Haramain by declining to conduct an en banc review of its August 7, 2012 opinion. The notice from the court today is brief:

The opinion filed on August 7, 2012, and appearing at 690 F.3d 1089, is hereby amended. An amended opinion is filed concurrently with this order.

With these amendments, the panel has voted to deny the petition for panel rehearing and the petition for rehearing en banc.

The full court has been advised of the petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc and no judge has requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. Fed. R. App. P. 35.

The petition for panel rehearing and petition for rehearing en banc are DENIED. No further petitions for en banc or panel rehearing shall be permitted.

Before going further with analysis, a word about the “amendments” to the opinion. The “Amended Opinion” is here. You can compare for yourself to the August 7 original opinion linked above, but the difference is pretty slight.

It appears all the court did is delete a few sentences here and there about 18 USC 2712(b). The court did not address, nor change, their erroneous assertion that plaintiffs’ Al-Haramain could have sued under 1806(a), or restore the misleadingly-omitted (by elipsis) language from 1806(a). Nor did the court address plaintiffs’ alternative theory of waiver of sovereign immunity.

Now, more than ever, you have to wonder just exactly what is in the secret sealed filings originally lodged by the DOJ in the 9th Circuit in Al-Haramain that the government scrambled so tellingly to “correct” in November of 2009. It would be nice if the inestimable Judges Harry Pregerson, Margaret McKeown and Michael Hawkins, “liberal lions” all, would deign to tell the American public what lies and/or fraud the Department of Justice perpetrated upon the court and the Al-Haramain plaintiffs that necessitated their blatant ass covering moves in November of 2009, and how those falsities interrelated to the decision to deny justice to the plaintiffs and the American public. How do these judges sleep at night?

With that out of the way, what does it all mean? Well, the key language in the original 9th Circuit opinion dated August 7, 2012 was:

Congress can and did waive sovereign immunity with respect to violations for which it wished to render the United States liable. It deliberately did not waive immunity with respect to § 1810, and the district court erred by imputing an implied waiver. Al Haramain’s suit for damages against the United States may not proceed under § 1810.

In short, wiretapping crimes against citizens and their organizations cannot, under any circumstance, be addressed. Because….IMMUNITY SUCKERS!

The perspective was explained by Marcy at the time of the August 7 opinion:

Because al-Haramain, at a time when Vaughn Walker was using 1810 to get by the government’s State Secrets invocation, said “it was not proceeding under other sections of FISA,” its existing claim is limited to 1810. The government used the information collected–in a secret process that ended up declaring al-Haramain a terrorist supporter–but not in a trial, and therefore not in a way al-Haramain can easily hold the government liable for.

The implication, of course, is that all the rest of the collection the government engages in–of all of us, not just al-Haramain–also escapes all accountability. So long as the government never uses the information itself–even if the entire rest of their case is based on illegally collected information (as it was in, at a minimum, al-Haramain’s terrorist designation)–a person cannot hold the government itself responsible.

The people who can be held accountable? The non-governmental or non law enforcement persons who conduct the surveillance.

But of course, they–the telecoms–have already been granted immunity.

Yes, there is now immunity every which way from Sunday, and between the AT&T cases of Hepting and Jewel, and now Al-Haramain, it has all been sanctioned by the “most liberal Circuit” in the land. Booyah.

A last word about why the title contains the words “death blow”. In short, it is because if this case, with these facts, with that judge (Vaughn Walker), and that trial court decision, cannot make it past the rank cynicism, duplicity and secrecy of the Bush/Obama continuum of regimes, then no case can. If none of that is possible in the “liberal” 9th Circuit, with a completely “liberal” panel of judges, then it is simply not possible. Yes, it is possible that plaintiffs Al-Haramain petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court, but it is almost certainly fruitless if they cannot even make it in the 9th Circuit, and they may well have a fear of further ingraining heinous law into the national books. We shall see, but it is certainly no given.

You have to feel for plaintiffs Al-Haramain, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor who lost their constitutional rights and cause of action, Judge Vaughn Walker who meticulously crafted a solid opinion working around state secrets and FISA constraints, as well as plaintiffs’ attorney Jon Eisenberg, who lost, along with co-counsel, over $2.5 million dollars worth of attorney fees and expenses, and the time those fees represented out of their lives. All down the drain to a craven Executive Branch, a duplicitous Department of Justice and a fraudulent “war on terror”. Ain’t that America.


ECPA Amendments and Privacy in a Post Petraeus World

One of the issues making the rounds like wildfire today was a report from Declan McCullagh at CNET regarding certain proposed amendments to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The article is entitled “Senate Bill Rewrite Lets Feds Read Your E-mail Without Warrants” and relates:

A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans’ e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans’ e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Leahy’s rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — to access Americans’ e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge. (CNET obtained the revised draft from a source involved in the negotiations with Leahy.)

This sounds like the predictably craven treachery that regularly comes out of Senate, indeed Congressional, legislation on privacy issues. And exactly what many had hoped would cease coming out of Washington after the public scrutiny brought on by the Petraeus/Broadwell/Kelley scandal. And, should these amendments make it into law, they may yet prove detrimental.

But there are a couple of problems here. First, as Julian Sanchez noted, those abilities by the government already substantially exist.

Lots of people RTing CNET’s story today seem outraged Congress might allow access to e-mail w/o warrant—but that’s the law ALREADY!

Well, yes. Secondly, and even more problematic, is Pat Leahy vehemently denies the CNET report. In fact, Senator Leahy does not support broad exemptions for warrantless searches for email content. A source within the Judiciary Committee described the situation as follows:

The CNET story reports as if the Chairman is offering an amendment to that end, which is not the case. What is pending before the committee is a substitute bill, HR 2471, that seeks to update pieces of the Electronic Privacy Communications Act and the Video Privacy Protection Act. The committee adopted that substitute in September, and will resume marking it up next week.

And that comports with the press release Senator Leahy issued later in the afternoon. Included in the press release is a section by section breakdown of what Leahy really has in mind trying to get out of committee and to the floor; it is not long and worth a look. While it does not go nearly far enough, there are some decent steps in Leahy’s proposed ECPA Amendment. The Title I changes regarding video tapes will not do a lot in the ever more digital streaming world, but the Title II proposals by Leahy do make some substantive improvements. It is, as they say, a start.

There should, however, be more, much more, added protection to citizen’s electronic privacy. Here is a comprehensive report from the Congressional Research Service just a week and a half ago entitled Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions that demonstrates what the government is going to do to protect itself. But what will the government do to protect you?

You would think the entitled royalty of the Washington DC Beltway would have had a wake up call as to just how little privacy American citizens have in their electronic communications as a result of the broad spider webbing of information the FBI sucked in on potentates such as David Petraeus, Gen. John Allen and supposed security expert Paula Broadwell. Not just collecting the information, but backtracing it to specific computers, users, and whatever location the users were at any given time. But that is not really the case. As Adam Serwer said:

If the director of the CIA can’t keep his private life secret from the FBI, you can’t either.

It is stunning what the government can get with effectively no process at all from providers; even more what they can get with common administrative bench subpoenas. All that is without a court supervised warrant. This report details the more than 300 different modalities of Federal administrative subpoena permitted by existing law. Couple that with an all too often rubber stamp traditional warrant process, and there is not much restraint on the government probing your deepest facets of electronic life.

The video above is a little longer than normal at 16 minutes, but it is a well paced look at Why Privacy Matters and has many people you will recognize in it. Privacy does matter.


General Dynamics: The Digital Tale of John & Jill and Dave & Paula

Another giant shoe has dropped in L’Affaire Petraeus. Not simply more specifics, but yet another General:

Gen. John Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, is under investigation for what a senior defense official said early Tuesday was “inappropriate communication’’ with Jill Kelley, the woman in Tampa who was seen as a rival for David H. Petraeus’s attentions by Paula Broadwell, the woman who had an extramarital affair with Mr. Petraeus.

In a statement released to reporters on his plane en route to Australia early Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said that the F.B.I. had informed him on Sunday of its investigation of General Allen.

Mr. Panetta turned the matter over to the Pentagon’s inspector general to conduct its own investigation into what the defense official said were 20,000 to 30,000 pages of documents, many of them e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley, who is married with children.

Really, at this point, what can you even say about the secret storm soap opera that roils within the rarified brass air of the US Military? This was just the last hit for a night that saw the emergence of the Shirtless FBI Guy (now under investigation himself by the Office of Professional Responsibility at DOJ) to a nightime search of Paula Broadwell’s home by the FBI.

There are too many tentacles, evolving too quickly, to go too deep on all the facts that have rolled out even in the last twelve hours. But the General Allen/Jill Kelley bit is fascinating. Remember, the handful of emails Paula Broadwell sent to Kelley reportedly did not mention Petraeus by name. This latest report at least raises the possibility Broadwell was referring to an inappropriate relationship between Kelley and Allen, and not Kelley and Petraeus. I am not saying such is the case, but it is also arguably consistent with the currently known substance of Broadwell’s emails to Kelley, so the question is valid to be raised.

A couple of other data points to note. First, Broadwell’s father made a somewhat cryptic comment yesterday that may be being explained now:

“This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out,” he told the Daily News.

“There is a lot more that is going to come out … You wait and see. There’s a lot more here than meets the eye.”

He said that his daughter, who’s at the center of the controversy that prompted CIA director David Petraeus to resign from his post, is a victim of character assassination, and that there’s something much bigger lurking behind the curtain.

Second, as I noted early yesterday morning, Jill Kelley has hired some of the most astoundingly powerful criminal defense and PR help imaginable:

They hired Abbe Lowell, a Washington lawyer who has represented clients such as former presidential candidate John Edwards and lobbyist Jack Abramoff. And the couple are employing crisis PR person Judy Smith, who has represented big names like Monica Lewinsky, Michael Vick and Kobe Bryant.

Now, let’s be honest, an innocent recipient of a handful of crank non-threatening emails, as Kelley was commonly portrayed when her name first came out, does NOT need that kind of heavy hitter professional service. Seriously, Abbe Lowell is not only a great attorney, he is as preeminent a counsel as exists for spook and national security defense cases. No one in their right mind pays for that unless they need it, especially 1,000 miles away from his office.

Another oddity occurred last night: The North Carolina home of Paula Broadwell was searched for nearly four hours by a full on execution team from the FBI. From the New York Times:

On Monday night, F.B.I. agents went to Ms. Broadwell’s home in Charlotte, N.C., and were seen carrying away what several reporters at the scene said were boxes of documents. A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case remains open, said Ms. Broadwell had consented to the search.

The key word in that quote that strikes me is “consensual”. Broadwell has lawyered up too, having hired prominent Washington DC defense attorney Robert F. Muse. If an attorney feels his client is the target of a proposed search, he does not consent, he makes the officers get a warrant and search for only what a court orders and nothing else. You have to wonder what was being searched for that Broadwell and her counsel were not more worried about?

It is still early in the Allen portion of this mess, but it sure does cast the entire matter in a new light. Seriously, 30,000 pages of communications between Allen and Kelley in two years? That is 41 pages a day. When in the world did Allen find time to make war? And keep in mind, Kelley had already been stated to be regularly (up to once a day) emailing Petraeus for some of that period…she must be getting carpal tunnel syndrome.

There is also the pressing question of exactly what the methods and means were for discovering and extracting these 30,000 some odd pages of communications between General Allen and Jill Kelley, and how that came to pass when she was supposedly and innocent victim of Paula Broadwell. There were already great questions in this regard about Broadwell and Petraeus. I will leave that for later, I suspect Marcy may have something to say on those issues.

Four-star generals. Two of them wrapped up in one salacious scandal. The Stones may need to modify their lyrics ever so slightly.


Wherein DC Sir Lancelots Turn Their Tail And Flee Like Candyass Sir Robins

Attention Americans:

Those brave elected and appointed representatives who represent YOU in the Federal Government are fleeing! Well, granted, I guess that doesn’t really account for the elected members of Congress who have been diddling and twiddling their thumbs, among other things, for a while now in order to suck at the tit of corporate cash, while doing nothing for you on the record at their elected jobs (no, Darrell Issa’s dog and pony show doesn’t count) and throw it around to perpetuate a fraud on you.

But, as they say in movies, that is something completely different.

No, here is the notice I take just a little umbrage with:

Non-emergency employees (including employees on pre-approved paid leave) will be granted excused absence (administrative leave) for the number of hours they were scheduled to work unless they are:

required to telework,

on official travel outside of the Washington, DC, area,

on leave without pay, or

on an alternative work schedule (AWS) day off.

Telework-Ready Employees who are scheduled to perform telework on the day of the announcement or who are required to perform unscheduled telework on a day when Federal offices are closed to the public must telework the entire workday or request leave, or a combination of both, in accordance with their agencies’ policies and procedures, subject to any applicable collective bargaining requirements.

Emergency Employees are expected to report to their worksites unless otherwise directed by their agencies.

As friend of the blog, Timothy Shorrock, noted:

No government Monday. A state of anarchy will reign!

I’m with Tim, we are all SO SCREWED!

Okay, and I’m going to take a flyer that Mr. Shorrock agrees, the nation may not only survive, but actually prosper without the usual cabal of corrupt con men and bloodsuckers that generally run things in Washington DC on a “normal” day. Call me crazy, but I am going out on that limb.

Here is my issue: They are all bozos on that bus. Pretty much all of the NOAA, CNN and other data intensive models have been prediting this likely Sand path for days.

Our Men in Havana, er, I mean men and women in DC, are just figuring this out now??? Perhaps the usual rhesus monkey brains were otherwise occupied still figuring out the Administration’s housing policy.

And, look at the directive. What does it really say? That the poohbahs suggest common workers, just being notified a couple of hours before they go to sleep, do what they were already doing, or already had the option to do, and work from home. For any others unable to do so, the suggestion is they take leave.

In short, the real backbone of the federal government, the regular workers, are being treated in a tardy and tawdry manner.

By the 1% MOTUs. Shocking, no?

So, while the politicians who are not already cravenly out of town on your dime are absent, even the remaining Knights of The Pinhead Table run like crazed Sir Robins.

Ain’t that America?

Uh, yeah, so tomorrow will be different from exactly what other day you federal jackasses??

Because, Congress, the DOJ, the SEC, the FEC, the NLRB, and all the rest, BEFORE SANDY, were sooooooo totally responsive to the needs and desires of their constituents.

On a serious note, this hurricane is pretty clearly a grave matter for human safety. Care SHOULD be taken. The projected damage had the DC/Eastern Virginia/Maryland area in the cone of danger in nearly every projection.

The federal government waited until now to tell regular workers, the real backbone of our functioning government to, paraphrasing “stay at home if you have that already available, or otherwise work as best you can.

That is loathsome from a leadership of cowardly and craven Sir Robins. And, on the remote chance you do not understand what a “Sir Robin” is, watch the video.


R.I.P. Senator Specter, You Will Be Missed

The Snarlin has ceased; via CBS News:

US Senator Arlen Specter, whose political career took him from Philadelphia City Hall to the US Congress, died Sunday morning at his home in Philadelphia at the age of 82 from complications of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He was born February 12, 1930.

His career was marked by what the pundits and Specter himself called “fierce independence.” But long before Specter ever stepped onto the Senate floor in Washington DC, he made it into national prominence by serving as assistant counsel for the Warren Commission, which investigated the 1963 assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy.

Specter postulated the controversial “single-bullet theory” that was eventually embraced by the panel and still stands to this day, despite the cry of conspiracy theorists who say there was more than one gunman in Dallas that November day.

“Admittedly a strange path for a bullet to take, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction,” Specter said.

We have had a complicated relationship with Arlen Specter here at Emptywheel, sometimes castigating him, sometimes praising him, sometimes laughing at him, sometimes laughing with him. Specter engendered all those things. But I always sensed a very decent heart beating underneath Specter’s surface, even if it was all too often masked by his votes for, and often vociferous support of, ever more destructive policies of the right.

For this, Specter earned the nickname “Scottish Haggis” here in the annals of Emptywheel. The term had its root in Mr. Specter’s predilection for Scottish Law, and goes all the way back to the original incarnation at The Next Hurrah. For a number of reasons, offal and otherwise, it was a nickname that stuck and seemed appropos and seemed to reflect the complicated nature of Senator Specter.

On a personal note, I did not have an abundance of interaction with Sen. Specter and his office, but in that which I did have, I found him and his office to be beyond both kind and professional. One instance stands head and shoulders above the others, and surrounded the Obama scuttled nomination of Dawn Johnsen to be head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It was my contention from the outset that the whip count votes were there to confirm Professor Johnsen for the job she was perfect for. And, in the roiling aftermath of the Bush/Cheney unitary executive excesses, the country desperately needed Johnsen’s intellectual sense of honesty and Constitutional integrity.

The only reason Dawn Johnsen did not get confirmed as OLC head was Barack Obama used her as false bait and cat nip for the more noisy progressive liberals. It was a glaring sign of depressing things to come from the not nearly as Constitution minded Barack Obama as had been pitched in his election run. Not only could Johnsen have been confirmed, as I pointed out before, she could also have been recess appointed by Obama. Despite all the ridicule I took at the time, that point has been proved conclusively by the later recess appointment of Richard Cordray to be head of the CFPB (another instance of Obama using a supremely qualified progressive, Elizabeth Warren, as bait and then hanging her out to dry).

The point was never that Dawn Johnsen couldn’t be confirmed, it was that Barack Obama and the insiders of his White House did not want her confirmed into leadership of the OLC. I knew that from talking to several inside the DOJ and Senate Judiciary Committee, but that was all off the record. When I found an obscure old comment from Arlen Specter indicating he was willing to support a cloture vote for Johnsen as far back as his second meeting with Dawn Johnsen on or about May 12, 2009, it was by then an old, and quite obscure comment. Specter could have walked it back or dissembled on the subject.

Arlen Specter didn’t walk it back or dissemble, instead he personally confirmed it to me. With the already in the bag vote of Sen. Richard Lugar, that was the 60 votes for Dawn Johnsen at OLC. Specter knew it would infuriate both the GOP and the Obama White House, and he knew exactly what story I was writing. He stood up. Oh, and, yes, he knew about “Scottish Haggis” too. The man had a sense of humor.

For the above vignette, and several others, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Snarlin Arlen Specter. His life and work in government spanned over five decades, he has got my salute today.

Sen. Specter repeatedly had to fight off serious cancer, and he did so with aplomb, courage and his good humor. He also was a tireless champion for the NIH and funding of cancer and stem cell research. When confronted with the last battle, the one which finally took him, Specter was upbeat, defiant and determined to get back to his part time hobby of stand up comedy. May the Scottish Haggis have many laughs wherever he may travel.


Hedges NDAA Indefinite Detention Decision Stayed By 2nd Circuit

As much as I, and most who care about Constitutional protections and Article III courts still having a function in balance of power determinations, the recent 112 page ruling by Judge Katherine Forrest in SDNY (see here and, more importantly, here) had fundamental issues that made review certain, and reversal all but so.

The first step was to seek a stay in the SDNY trial court, which Judge Forrest predictably refused; but then the matter would go to the Second Circuit, and the stay application was formally filed today.

Well, that didn’t take long. From Josh Gerstein at Politico, just filed:

A single federal appeals court judge put a temporary hold Monday night on a district court judge’s ruling blocking enforcement of indefinite detention provisions in a defense bill passed by Congress and signed into law last year by President Barack Obama.

U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier issued a one-page order staying the district court judge’s injunction until a three-judge panel of the court can take up the issue on September 28.

Lohier offered no explanation or rationale for the temporary stay.

Here is the actual order both granting the temporary stay and scheduling the September 28 motions panel consideration.

This is effectively an administrative stay until the full three judge motions panel can consider the matter properly on September 28th. But I would be shocked if the full panel does anything but continue the stay for the pendency of the appeal.


DOJ Files Appeal: Further Thoughts On Hedges and The Lawfare/Wittes Analysis

Last night (well for me, early morning by the blog clock) I did a post on the decision in the SDNY case of Hedges et. al v. Obama. It was, save for some extended quotations, a relatively short post that touched perhaps too much on the positive and not enough on the inherent problems that lead me to conclude at the end of the post that the decision’s odds on appeal are dire.

I also noted that it was certain the DOJ would appeal Judge Forrest’s decision. Well, that didn’t take long, it has already occurred. This afternoon, the DOJ filed their Notice of Appeal.

As nearly all initial notices of appeal are, it is a perfunctory two page document. But the intent and resolve of DOJ is crystal clear. Let’s talk about why the DOJ is being so immediately aggressive and what their chances are.

I woke up this morning and saw the, albeit it not specifically targeted, counterpoint to my initial rosy take offered by Ben Wittes at Lawfare, and I realized there was a duty to do a better job of discussing the problems with Forrest’s decision as well. Wittes’ post is worth a read so that the flip side of the joy those of us on the left currently feel is tempered a bit by the stark realities of where Katherine Forrest’s handiwork is truly headed.

Wittes makes three main critiques. The first:

So put simply, Judge Forrest’s entire opinion hinges on the idea that the NDAA expanded the AUMF detention authority, yet she never once states honestly the D.C. Circuit law extant at the time of its passage—law which unambiguously supports the government’s contention that the NDAA affected little or no substantive change in the AUMF detention power.

Secondly:

Second, Judge Forrest is also deeply confused about the applicability of the laws of war to detention authority under U.S. domestic law. She does actually does spend a great deal of time talking about Al-Bihani, just not about the part of it that really matters to the NDAA. She fixates instead on the panel majority’s determination that the laws of war do not govern detentions because they are not part of U.S. domestic law. Why exactly she thinks this point is relevant I’m not quite sure. She seems to think that the laws of war are vaguer and more permissive than the AUMF—precisely the opposite of the Al-Bihani panel’s assumption that the laws of war would impose additional constraints. But never mind. Someone needs to tell Judge Forrest that the D.C. Circuit, in its famous non-en-banc en-banc repudiated that aspect of the panel decision denying the applicability of the laws of war and has since assumed that the laws of war do inform detention authority under the AUMF. In other words, Judge Forrest ignores—indeed misrepresents—Al-Bihani on the key matter to which it is surpassingly relevant, and she fixates on an aspect of the opinion that is far less relevant and that, in any case, is no longer good law.

Lastly, Ben feels the scope of the permanent injunction prescribed by Forrest is overbroad:

Judge Forrest is surely not the first district court judge to try to enjoin the government with respect to those not party to a litigation and engaged in conduct not resembling the conduct the parties allege in their complaint. But her decision represents an extreme kind of case of this behavior. After all, “in any manner and as to any person” would seem by its terms to cover U.S. detention operations in Afghanistan.

First off, although I did not quote that portion of Ben’s analysis, but I think we both agree that Judge Forrest pens overly long and loosely constructed opinions, if the two in Hedges are any guide. This is what I often refer to as “rambling”, and it is that.

Secondly, I note, significantly, Ben does not mention, much less meaningfully challenge, Forrest’s discussion on, and finding of, standing for the Hedges Plaintiffs. He should, it is every bit as big of an appellate concern as the three areas he does list. Forrest, in effect, used the disdain the Obama DOJ displayed to the court in not affirmatively presenting evidence and otherwise engaging in the initial March hearing on the merits of the plaintiffs’ situation as her basis for finding standing under Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife.

Forrest does an admirable job laying out a foundation for her finding of standing, but the 2nd will take some issue and it is almost certain the Roberts Court who, are ideologically led by Scalia in their ever more restrictive view of standing, will reverse Forrest. If I am writing the inevitable DOJ appeal, that is where I start. And if an appellate court, as I suspect, starts there and disagrees with Forrest, the inquiry may end right there without getting into further merits. I would not bet against just that happening.

Standing issue aside, Ben Wittes’ demurrers to the Hedges opinion are also salient. Initially, I was going to deconstruct the heart of Ben’s take via some older material from another Lawfare protagonist I very much respect, Steve Vladeck. Due to other duties interrupting the writing of the instant post, Steve has come along and done that for me in a post at Lawfare:

Indeed, I’m not perplexed by the theory behind Judge Forrest’s analysis, but by its application to these facts. Consider section 1021(e) of the NDAA, a.k.a. the “Feinstein Amendment”:

Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.

As Marty and I explained in this post, the entire point of the Feinstein Amendment was to quell concerns that the NDAA might covertly authorize the detention of U.S. citizens or other individuals within the United States. It did so by emphasizing that it merely preserved the (entirely ambiguous) status quo in such cases. This proviso didn’t resolve the scope of the government’s authority to detain such individuals; it merely provided that the NDAA didn’t change that question in any meaningful way.

As such, the Feinstein Amendment appears to necessarily foreclose the argument that what’s “new” in the NDAA could encompass any power to detain individuals covered by section 1021(e), i.e., “United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” Such individuals might still be subject to detention under the AUMF, but thanks to the Feinstein Amendment, only under the AUMF. And so, to the extent that Judge Forrest’s analysis turns on the conclusion that the NDAA confers detention authority not provided by the AUMF, one would think she’d have to explain why the Feinstein Amendment doesn’t limit the “newness” of the NDAA exactly to those individuals with less clearly established constitutional rights, e.g., non-citizens arrested and detained outside the territorial United States.

You may say to yourself, well what is there particularly positive about Vladecks’ take? And it is a decent question. The answer is, admittedly, nuanced and somewhat thin. But it starts with the fact Steve is willing to consider Forrest’s “central premise”. And, indeed, contra Ben Wittes, I think it is more than possible to envision the Katherine Forrest framing in a world that is capable of distinguishing between Ex Parte Milligan and Ex Parte Quirin in a more liberal Founding Fathers view as opposed to the militaristic “War On Terror” view such as is the single minded view of the Bush/Cheney to Obama Executive Branch unitary theory.

Secondly, and as Wittes appropriately notes, Judge Forrest is in no way bound by the hideous precedent that has been laid down by the DC Circuit. No, Forrest operates in the 2nd Circuit and is not bound by the crazed opinions of Janice Rogers Brown and the War On Terror Stockholm Syndrome infected DC Circuit that seems to have lost all perspective of that from whence we came. Give Katherine Forrest credit, I think she understands the slippery and craven hill she is heroically trying to climb, and that is why she engages in such rambling attempts to buck up her position.

As to Ben’s last beef, the overbreadth of the permanent injunction, well, yeah, that is the nature of the beast, no? Seriously, when any federal court is interpreting a statutory decree of Congress on a “facial”, as opposed to “as applied” basis, especially one as far reaching and contra to Founding principles as Section 1021(b) of the NDAA, the injunction has to really be that broad to engage the “face” of the statute. So, that one is not really the crux of the consideration in this case.

In conclusion, I have to, regrettably, agree with my friend Ben Wittes, the shelf life of the joy from Katherine Forrest’s decision in Hedges et. al v. Obama is remarkably short. That does not mean it does not have immense value though. Doomed as it may be, it is a significant and principled pushback at the treachery engaged in by the DC Circuit in the “Detainee Cases”. It almost certainly will not hold up, but I have not in recent times (maybe not since Vaughn Walker) had more respect for what a federal judge has tried to do to protect the Constitution and principles this country was built on.


Chris Hedges et. al Win Another Round On the NDAA

You may remember back in mid May Chris Hedges, Dan Ellsberg, Jennifer Bolen, Noam Chomsky, Alexa O’Brien, Kai Wargalla, Birgetta Jonsdottir and the US Day of Rage won a surprising, nee stunning, ruling from Judge Katherine Forrest in the Southern District of New York. Many of us who litigate felt the plaintiffs would never even be given standing, much less prevail on the merits. But, in a ruling dated May 16, 2012, Forrest gave the plaintiffs not only standing, but the affirmative win by issuing a preliminary injunction.

Late yesterday came even better news for Hedges and friends, the issuance of a permanent injunction. I will say this about Judge Forrest, she is not brief as the first ruling was 68 pages, and todays consumes a whopping 112 pages. Here is the setup, as laid out by Forrest (p. 3-4):

Plaintiffs are a group of writers, journalists, and activists whose work regularly requires them to engage in writing, speech, and associational activities protected by the First Amendment. They have testified credibly to having an actual and reasonable fear that their activities will subject them to indefinite military detention pursuant to § 1021(b)(2).

At the March hearing, the Government was unable to provide this Court with any assurance that plaintiffs’ activities (about which the Government had known–and indeed about which the Government had previously deposed those individuals) would not in fact subject plaintiffs to military detention pursuant to § 1021(b)(2). Following the March hearing (and the Court’s May 16 Opinion on the preliminary injunction), the Government fundamentally changed its position.

In its May 25, 2012, motion for reconsideration, the Government put forth the qualified position that plaintiffs’ particular activities, as described at the hearing, if described accurately, if they were independent, and without more, would not subject plaintiffs to military detention under § 1021. The Government did not–and does not–generally agree or anywhere argue that activities protected by the First Amendment could not subject an individual to indefinite military detention under § 1021(b)(2). The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides for greater protection: it prohibits Congress from passing any law abridging speech and associational rights. To the extent that § 1021(b)(2) purports to encompass protected First Amendment activities, it is unconstitutionally overbroad.

A key question throughout these proceedings has been, however, precisely what the statute means–what and whose activities it is meant to cover. That is no small question bandied about amongst lawyers and a judge steeped in arcane questions of constitutional law; it is a question of defining an individual’s core liberties. The due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment require that an individual understand what conduct might subject him or her to criminal or civil penalties. Here, the stakes get no higher: indefinite military detention–potential detention during a war on terrorism that is not expected to end in the foreseeable future, if ever. The Constitution requires specificity–and that specificity is absent from § 1021(b)(2).

Those were the stakes in the litigation and Katherine Forrest did not undersell them in the least. Now, truth be told, there is not really a lot of new ground covered in the new decision that was not touched on in the earlier ruling, but it is even more fleshed out and also formalizes a declination of the government’s motion for reconsideration filed in June as well as argument on the additional grounds necessary for a permanent injunction over the preliminary injunction initially entered. As Charlie Savage pointed out, it is a nice little gift coming on the same day the House voted 301-118 to re-up the dastardly FISA Amendments Act.

And Forrest really did go out of her way to slap back the government’s bleating that courts should stay out of such concerns and leave them to the Executive and Legislative Branches, an altogether far too common and grating refrain in DOJ arguments in national security cases (p 11-12):

The Court is mindful of the extraordinary importance of the Government’s efforts to safeguard the country from terrorism. In light of the high stakes of those efforts as well as the executive branch’s expertise, courts undoubtedly owe the political branches a great deal of deference in the area of national security. See Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 130 S. Ct. 2705, 2711 (2010). Moreover, these same considerations counsel particular attention to the Court’s obligation to avoid unnecessary constitutional questions in this context. Cf. Ashwander v. Tenn. Valley Auth., 297 U.S. 288, 347 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring) (“The Court will not pass upon a constitutional question although properly presented by the record, if there is also present some other ground upon which the case may be disposed of.”). Nevertheless, the Constitution places affirmative limits on the power of the Executive to act, and these limits apply in times of peace as well as times of war. See, e.g., Ex parte Milligan, 72 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2, 125-26 (1866). Heedlessly to refuse to hear constitutional challenges to the Executive’s conduct in the name of deference would be to abdicate this Court’s responsibility to safeguard the rights it has sworn to uphold.

And this Court gives appropriate and due deference to the executive and legislative branches–and understands the limits of its own (and their) role(s). But due deference does not eliminate the judicial obligation to rule on properly presented constitutional questions. Courts must safeguard core constitutional rights. A long line of Supreme Court precedent adheres to that fundamental principle in unequivocal language. Although it is true that there are scattered cases–primarily decided during World War II–in which the Supreme Court sanctioned undue deference to the executive and legislative branches on constitutional questions, those cases are generally now considered an embarrassment (e.g., Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) (upholding the internment of Japanese Americans based on wartime security concerns)), or referred to by current members of the Supreme Court (for instance, Justice Scalia) as “wrong” (e.g., Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942) (allowing for the military detention and execution of an American citizen detained on U.S. soil)). Presented, as this Court is, with unavoidable constitutional questions, it declines to step aside.

If you relish such things, especially the rare ones where the good guys win, the whole decision is at the link. If you would like to read more, but not the entire 112 pages, the summary portion is contained in pages 3-14. For those longtime readers of Emptywheel, note the citation to Ex Parte Milligan on pages 12, 37, 51 and 79. Our old friend Mary would have been overjoyed by such liberal use of Milligan, especially this passage by Judge Forrest on pages 79-80:

A few years later, in Milligan, the Supreme Court held:
“Neither the President, nor Congress, nor the Judiciary can disturb any one of the safeguards of civil liberty incorporated into the Constitution, except so far as the right is given to suspend in certain cases the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.” 71 U.S. at 4. The Court stated, “No book can be found in any library to justify the assertion that military tribunals may try a citizen at a place where the courts are open.” Id. at 73.

Indeed. Keep this is mind, because the concept of military tribunals not being appropriate to try citizens “at a place where the courts are open” is a critical one. Although the language invokes “citizens”, the larger concept of functioning courts being preferable will be coming front and center as the Guantanamo Military Tribunals move through trial and into the appellate stages, and will also be in play should Julian Assange ever really be extradited for trial in the United States (a big if, but one constantly discussed).

So, all in all, yesterday’s decision by Judge Forrest has far ranging significance, and is a remarkably refreshing and admirable one that should be widely celebrated. That said, a note of caution is in order: Enjoy it while you can, because if you are the betting type, I would not lay much of the family farm on Forrest’s decision holding up on appeal.

There was talk on Twitter that the Supreme Court would reverse, but I am not sure it even gets that far. In fact, unless Chris Hedges et. al get a very favorable draw on the composition of their appellate panel in the 2nd Circuit, I am dubious it goes further than that. And one thing is sure, the government is going to appeal.

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/congress/page/19/