Category Archives: Politics

How about human rights at home?

Posted by on December 8, 2011 1 comment

Today was one of those “only in Washington” days where I attended two conferences on human rights. The first one was held at George Washington University and the focus was on business and human rights. A second conference was held across town at the Newseum and it’s focus was on Internet freedom. Both conferences were well down in their own rights, interesting speakers and both conferences had the honor of a keynote speaker, Maria Otero, the Under Secretary of State for Democracy & Global Affairs.

Under Secretary gave essentially the same speech at both events, focusing on Internet freedom around the world. It was a well crafted speech (even the rerun) and reflected the Obama Administration policy targeting repressive regimes around the world. Yet, as I sat there listening to this laudable set of speeches, I reflected on a disappointing position that the Obama Administration has taken against young women in America.

I am speaking of the decision by the Administration to deny women under the age of 17 to purchase emergency contraceptives over the counter.

Yesterday, the Food & Drug Administration, at the advice of its scientific advisers, recommend that Plan B, the branded “morning after” pill, was safe for all women of child bearing age to use. Since its approval by the FDA for sale in the U.S., the previous practice, established by the Bush Administration was to allow for the sale of Plan B without a prescription but the pill was to be kept behind the pharmacists counter and given to women specifically requesting the drug. If a woman was under the age of 17, she needed parental permission. This procedure was an effort by the Bush Administration to restrict women’s access to contraception, a decision to appease its conservative base.

It’s now 2011. President Obama Administration, steadfast in his view that scientific evidence would not be trumped by politics did the unthinkable. For the first time, a Secretary of Health & Human Services overruled the Food & Drug Administrator’s decision to approve the sale of drugs to the American public. Overruling the FDA’s unconditional approval to sell emergency contraception over-the-counter to all women, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius rejected the FDA’s scientific evidence and slapped down young women who seek to control their own bodies.

For a full discussion of the politics of this appalling decision, read the piece on Reuters.com here.

The Debt Supercommittee: Will it raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy?

Posted by on November 4, 2011 No comments

Introduction

The Debt Super Committee – the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – has been established to create a plan before Thanksgiving to cut $1.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade. If the Committee fails there will be an automatic $1.2 trillion in cuts to defense and discretionary spending. While this pressure is significant for the committee members and Congress as a whole, the likelihood of success for this Committee in coming up with a workable plan is unknown. Read more »

Political Fundamentalism and the Tyranny of Stupidity

Posted by on December 23, 2010 2 comments

“The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” Bertrand Russell

No words more accurately describe the thinkers at the Heritage Foundation as shown in a recent post on their web site, “Why Does Sovereignty Matter to America?” They suggest that American sovereignty is threatened by looming international forces.  According to the author of this screed, “[O]ur sovereignty faces new threats. International organizations and courts seek to reshape the international system. Nations are to give up their sovereignty and be governed by a “global consensus.” Independent, sovereign nations will be replaced by “transnational” organizations that reject national sovereignty.”

I suppose the opening line of the Heritage Foundation post should have given away the punch line to this amazing corruption of legal reasoning: “The United States is a sovereign nation. Sovereignty is a simple idea.” Really?

So why have the Heritage Foundation “thinkers” gotten on their high horses? Well, in the case of the author, Steven Groves, he is perhaps concerned with the risk that American leaders could be prosecuted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court for their misdeeds in various wars which the country has engaged in of late.  Framed in the logic of Constitutional fundamentalism, which has become so popular with the conservative Right, he suggests that the republic is at risk from foreign forces bent on usurping the rights of Americans as spelled out in the Constitution.

For those familiar with domestic and international law, Groves’ logic fails. Despite his arguments, Constitutional fundamentalism has never been the basis for legal reasoning in America. With respect to principles of international law, it has always been the case that national laws of the United States are created that embrace principles set forth in treaties once entered into by the U.S. For example, the international law forbidding genocide has its counterpart set forth under Title 50, Section 1091 of the U.S. Code. Apparently Mr. Groves missed that lecture while attending law school.

Another explanation for this diatribe can be found in the all too common problem with conservative thinkers today. Playing to the lowest common denominator of the electorate and characterizing all things, which they don’t like as “bad” in the simplest of terms, conservative “thinkers” avoid any real debate about the complexities in the world around them. Like the recruitment by the Taliban and al Qaeda of impressionable young men in the belief that they get to hang with virgins once they blow themselves up, the conservative right demonizes solutions to complex problems with flippant solutions, effectively blows up the rule of law in the process and embrace the fools who buy their twisted logic. This has proven effective for idiots like Sarah Palin and Glen Beck and has served as a rallying cry for Tea Party acolytes everywhere.

It is all too apparent that this sort of reckless thinking is intended to garner votes from an uninformed electorate at the cost of preserving the rule of law.  This is the Christmas gift that the Heritage Foundation and the extreme Right offers America. Thanks a bunch!

Free Hamida Hassan

Posted by on December 3, 2010 No comments

In April 2009 we wrote a post called “Crack vs. powder: the drug law that continues to ravage Black communities”. The difference in drug sentencing laws between crack and powder cocaine was astonishing and reflected deeply entrenched racism. Since 1986, defendants caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine have gotten the same punishment, five years in prison, as defendants convicted of possessing only five grams of crack cocaine. That’s a sentencing ratio of 100-1.

Thankfully, in August 2010 President Obama signed a new law that will close the long-disputed gap in federal sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine.  According to the PBS Newshour with Gwen Ifill, the new law reduces that dramatic disparity, cutting the ratio to about 18-1. And, for the first time in 40 years, Congress is rolling back a mandatory minimum sentence already on the books. The law won rare bipartisan support.

In an interview with former Arkansas Congressman Asa Hutchinson, who served as the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration under President George W. Bush, and Judge Reggie Walton, who sits on the U.S. District Court bench for Washington, D.C., Gwen Ifill explored the question of why this incredible disparity in drug sentencing existed in the first place. Judge Walton explained that crack cocaine was so devastating in inner-city communities, primarily because of the violence caused by drug organizations that were vying to stake out their turf. Also, there was a misperception that crack cocaine was something different chemically than what powder cocaine was. For these reasons crack cocaine developed more of a stigma than powder.

In response to the question of why attitudes have shifted, Congressman Hutchinson said “I remember when I was in Congress 14 years ago advocating for reducing this disparity, and — and many of my colleagues didn’t want to sign on to this because they didn’t want to be perceived as being weak on crime. They didn’t want to reduce the penalties for cocaine. And so it had to take a lot of very difficult stories to educate them, as well as the science catching up and the law enforcement community expressing, we need to change this for fairness.”

Gwen Ifill went on to point out that the new standards are not retroactive. And that the sentencing commission was silent on that point. Thus Hamida Hassan, a 42-year-old mother and grandmother who is 16 years into a 27 year prison sentence for a first time nonviolent crack offense, continues to languish in jail. In a recent All Things Considered, Ari Shapiro said that the Nebraska judge who heard her case said he didn’t want to give such a harsh sentence, but he saw no way to give a shorter term under federal sentencing guidelines at the time. Under the sentencing guidelines now in place, Hassan would have already served her time.

Jay Rorty of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project is leading a campaign on behalf of Hassan and in his interview with Shapiro, he said “I have worked with prisoners for a long time and I’ve never seen the volume of letters and support from prison officials themselves in support of commutation.”

This interview was in the context of a discussion regarding the fact that President Obama has yet to exercise his pardon power and clearly Hamida Hassan is a great candidate. What is Obama waiting for? Is he afraid of political backlash? Is he afraid of being perceived as favoring someone with a Muslim name? Is this one more instance where the change we were promised will not materialize?

Hamida Hassan has been waiting 16 years. She, more than anyone, needs the Barack Obama we thought we elected in 2008.

The Ghailani Aftermath: A Rejection of Justice

Posted by on November 23, 2010 No comments

“There is a definitive reason that military combatants are treated differently than U.S. citizens. This trial exemplifies the difference between civilian trials and military tribunals. The blame for this legal failure rests at the feet of the president and his attorney general. Their plan to try non-citizen terrorists captured on a faraway battlefield in a civilian court of law is misguided and dangerous.”

Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas)
The Hill’s Congress Blog
November 23, 2010

As noted by Representative Olson and voiced by many others in Washington, our system of justice has failed. Rep. Olson is talking about the recent conviction in a civilian court of law in New York of convicted terrorist Ahmed Ghailani for his role in the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 224 people were killed.

But did justice fail?

No, it worked.

The logic expounded by Rep.Olson and others making noise about the successful criminal trial is focused on the fact that Ghailani was acquitted of all but one of the 285 counts against him. What he fails to note is that one of the factors that led to Ghailani’s acquittal on many of the charges stemmed from evidence obtained from his torture while in the custody of the CIA.

While in custody, Ghailani confessed to a number of facts, including his purchase of explosives from a man who later testified that he had indeed supplied Ghailani with the explosives. The judge in the case ruled that the evidence obtained was excludable under the Fifth Amendment protection from self-incrimination. This Constitutional protection seems to trouble Rep. Olson and other opponents of the rule of law in America.

Nobody, including the jurors in the Ghailani trail, disagree that he is guilty of plotting to kill and maim hundreds of people. While all of the jurors names are kept secret for their protection, there is some evidence that the verdict was a compromise for one hold out juror who was under pressure from the remaining jurors to convict on all of the charges. Perhaps knowing that at sentencing Ghailani would not walk under any circumstance, one charge would suffice.

Where the disagreement in the outcome that seems troubling for Rep. Olson is in a system of justice that does not rubber stamp his ideological belief that terrorists must be put away at all costs. Proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Ghailani and other terrorists are guilty of the crimes with which they are charged is an idea that has selective applicability.

Examples abound where the extreme cases are used as justification for altering the sacred principles of justice under our Constitution. However, the real risk in doing so is the precedence that it creates for ordinary people. Rep. Olson’s “misguided and dangerous” doctrine that he espouses poses as great a threat to our democracy as any terrorist. Crossing that legal line as he is so eager to do would ensure our demise far quicker than any bomb maker in east Africa.