[NYTr] 1,000+ Lawyers Condemn Bush Rape of Constitution

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Kathy Roberts - activ-l

1,000 Lawyers Defy Bush Rape of Constitution

The Blog - 12/21/2007
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=262693

Lawyers Stepping Up

by  Katrina vanden Heuvel

"We are lawyers in the United States of America. As such, we have
all taken an oath obligating us to defend the Constitution and the
rule of law.. We believe the Bush administration has committed
numerous offenses against the Constitution and may have violated
federal laws.. Moreover, the administration has blatantly defied
congressional subpoenas, obstructing constitutional oversight ..
Thus, we call on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Senate
Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to launch hearings into the
possibility that crimes have been committed by this administration
in violation of the Constitution.. We call for the investigations
to go where they must, including into the offices of the President
and the Vice President." -American Lawyers Defending the Constitution

Over one thousand lawyers - including former Governor Mario Cuomo
and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein - have signed
onto the above statement demanding wide-ranging investigative
hearings into unconstitutional and potentially criminal activity
by the Bush administration.

In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Michael Ratner,
president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and winner of the
2007 Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship, said: "The
majority of lawyers in this country understand that the Bush
administration has really gone off the page of constitutional rights
and off the page of fundamental rights, and is willing to push the
Congress to restore those rights." Ratner said he was "dismayed"

that a Democratic majority has failed "to push on key illegalities.
the torture program, and now the destruction of the tapes involving
the torture program; the warrantless wiretapping, the denial of
habeas corpus, the secret sites/rendition program, special trials,
and of course what we now know is the firing of US Attorneys scandal..
The minimal that absolutely is needed to get us back on the page
of law is to have serious investigative hearings that go up the
chain of command and figure out who is responsible for what."

Ratner noted that even with regard to the US attorney's investigations,
where Congressional committees held Harriet Miers, Josh Bolten, and
Karl Rove in contempt, leadership has failed to enforce these actions
by bringing the resolutions to a vote. "Just announcing that
investigations will be held and subpoenas will be issued is terribly
insufficient unless Congress is willing to enforce the subpoenas
by issuing contempt citations," Ratner said.

"Congress has a constitutional duty to oversee the activities of
the executive branch and our entire system of government is threatened
when Congress simply folds before an obstinate executive. Issuing
contempt citations against Bolten, Miers, and Rove should be
Congress's first order of business in 2008."

Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, discussed
the administration's torture program violating three US-ratified
treaties and the US torture statute; the illegal War in Iraq violating
the US-ratified UN Charter as a war of aggression; and Attorney
General Michael Mukasey's conflict of interest in overseeing
investigations into the torture program and the destruction of the
CIA interrogations tapes.

Also speaking with reporters was Jesselyn Raddack, a former Justice
Department ethics lawyer who served as an advisor during the
interrogation of John Walker Lindh (the "American Taliban"). Raddack
said, "My e-mails documented my advice against interrogating Lindh
without a lawyer, and concluded that the FBI committed an ethics
violation when it did so anyway. Both the CIA videotapes and my
e-mails were destroyed, in part, because officials were concerned
that they documented controversial interrogation methods that could
put agency officials in legal jeopardy.. " Raddack pointed to the
Department of Justice's investigations of Enron and Arthur Anderson
for obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence, and the
need for the same aggressive oversight and legal proceedings in
these scandals.

This is a vital effort by those charged with defending our constitution,
as Ratner said, "This lawyers' letter and the growing number of
signatures we'll have on it, and prominent people - it's a way of
saying to Congress, 'You need some backbone. You need to have a
serious investigation, wherever it might go, on these issues that
really have taken the United States out of the mainstream of human
rights.' It's absolutely critical. We've opened up the door to
illegality.. Unless we have accountability on those illegalities,
we're going to be facing a very bleak future in which fundamental
rights will not really be obeyed."