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Article I, Section 1, US Constitution: First Amendment to the US Constitution: Seventh Amendment to the US Constitution:
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SENATE VOTES 94 TO 2 TO STRIP BUSH ADMIN. OF POWER TO NAME FEDERAL PROSECUTORS WITHOUT REVIEW USA PATRIOT ACT PROVISION OVERTURNED IN WAKE OF APPARENTLY POLITICAL APPLICATION OF NEW POWER 20 March 2007 As calls increase in president's party, and in Congress, for the attorney general to resign, the Senate has voted overwhelmingly to strip the government of a special power to name federal proseucutors without an approval process. The investigations into whether political motivations were at play in the firing of 8 US attorneys last year let the Senate to vote 94 to 2 to oppose the special post-9/11 power. On the same day as the Senate vote, the president is reported to have phoned Attorney General Gonzales to express is firm support and to promise to back him in maintaining his position. The Senate vote, however, shows that a majority of Republicans in that body no longer trust the executive to manage fairly a system designed after the attacks of 11 September 2001 to permit flexibility and quality control in federal prosecutions. Alberto Gonzales has provoked strong feelings for his legal stance on a number of issues since before being named to the post of top prosecutor. The Guardian reports "As White House counsel in 2002, he wrote a memo in which he argued that torture could be allowed in certain circumstances, in particular in relation to the inmates at Guantánamo Bay." He was also tied to reports earlier this year that showed the FBI had systematically abused its powers under the revised USA Patriot Act, and had collected private information on tens of thousands of American citizens via secret "national security letters" which were supported by no warrants and no evidentiary process or court review. The US attorney firings appear to be an area of grave concern for the administration. Early statements on the reasons for the dismissals have been repeatedly contradicted by the documentary trail. E-mails released revealed the involvement of both Mr. Gonzales and the president's top political aide, Karl Rove, and the more than 3,000 pages of documents published yesterday are reported to show the White House was concerned the firings would not be legally substantiable. While expressing continuing support for Gonzales, the White House today offered officially to permit aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers to be available for "conversations" with lawmakers, but not sworn testimony. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) is quoted by the New York Times as saying in response: "That’s fine. Let’s have a conversation under oath, with a transcript." [s]
BACKGROUND: Investigations by the judiciary committees in both the House and the Senate are probing the suspicious nature of the untimely dismissal of at least 8 US attorneys, for what appear to be political reasons. The White House had claimed there was not strategy to fire en masse, until it was revealed that there was in fact consultation on firing all US attorneys and replacing them with political loyalists. [Full Story] JUSTICE DEPT. ADMITS MISTAKES IN FIRING US ATTORNEYS The Justice Department's new performance rating system has come under fire, after the firing of 8 US attorneys was called into question. The cases were not clearly cases of underperformance, but seemed to indicate there had been political motivations for the dismissals. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has now admitted that the program was not applied properly in some of those cases and promises to improve the evaluations policy. [Full Story] HIGH COURT ALLOWS DEMOTION FOR DISSENT The freedom of speech is one of the foundational rights under US constitutional law, as manifest in the First Amendment, because it affords the common citizen a protection against a basic authoritarian abuse of power. Now, the US Supreme Court has ruled 5 to 4 that public employees do not enjoy First Amendment protections while on duty. [Full Story] GOV'T POLICY UNLAWFULLY CRIMINALIZES COMMENT ON SCIENTIFIC FACT The global environment is, of course, a global issue, one that touches every life on the planet, and the science about it should be open and available to all. Past government policy and existing federal law mean that such scientific evidence should be readily available to the public. But now, it appears that several agencies are laboring to silence scientists who are researching climate trends and alterations. [Full Story] COURT FILING CITES 'CONCERTED EFFORT' TO ATTACK CRITICS Regardless of whether the president or the vice president have done anything illegal, it is now clear that they were both involved in deliberately using classified national security information to smear a critic of their Iraq policy. This contradicts statements made as recently as last week which suggest that the president opposed any such use of sensitive information for personal or political gain. [Full Story] |
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