It appears that two, maybe three, Republican Senators should be thrown in jail for filing a perjurious brief before the Supreme Court:
It’s not within the Supreme Court’s power to decide the constitutional challenges brought by Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Guantanamo
detainee whose case will be argued before the court tomorrow, say Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. In a brief they filed with the Supreme Court, they argue that Congress kicked Hamdan’s current case out of court when it passed the Detainee Treatment Act last December…The senators base their argument on the “legislative history” of the DTA—the official statements that members of Congress make about a bill leading up to its passage, as captured in the Congressional Record. In other words, Graham and Kyl cite themselves: in particular, an “extensive colloquy” between the two that appears in the Record on Dec. 21, 2005, the day of the DTA’s passage.
There is just a slight problem with the representation of the facts that Senators Kyl and Graham gave…
In their own brief to the court, Hamdan’s lawyers said that Kyl and Graham’s colloquy
didn’t take place on the floor of the Senate. As evidence, they cite the C-SPAN tape for the debate leading up to the Dec. 21 voice vote. Kyl and Graham don’t appear. (See for yourself.)
Senate officials confirm that the Graham-Kyl colloquy was inserted.When a senator wants to put a statement into the record, he or she signs it, writes “live” on it, and, with the routine consent of the rest of the body, into the record it goes.
That’s not, however, what Kyl and Graham told the court. Their brief states that “the Congressional Record is presumed to reflect live debate except
when the statements therein are followed by a bullet … or are underlined” (their italics). The colloquy appears in the record without a bullet or underline; ergo, the brief implies, it must be live. The colloquy is even scripted to sound live. “Mr. President, I see that we are nearing the end of our allotted time,” Kyl says at one point. At
another, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., appears to interject a question. “If I might interrupt,” he begins.I called Brownback’s office
to ask if he’d given this testimony live on the Senate floor. “Yes, it was live,” an aide told me. I said that I’d been told otherwise by Senate staffers and mentioned the C-SPAN tape. “Let me call you back, “the aide said. She never did. Nor did Kyl or Graham’s press reps.
In my opinion, this is sufficiently unethical, and probably sufficiently illegal, that Senators Kyl, Graham, and Brownback should be stripped of their offices and face criminal charges.
To intentionally submit a false and misleading brief to the Supreme Court is simply unacceptable.
2:57 PM’S headline is replaced by 3:00 PM’s.
Truthout reports Rove and Hadley to be indicted.
Fitzmas in March.
Best news I have heard all day long! Lets not stop there. Lets get them all under indictment..I think this was a combination of many who were in on this deed. My how I feel good today witht he news…hugs…
timing their convictions for after Bush leaves office and a Democrat is president. Don’t want any pardons here.
I don’t know anything about the law. Can a presidential pardon be obtained for an indictment? If yes, then Bush/Cheney must be impeached. Cheney’s probably going to be in Libby/Hadley/Rove’s handbasket, though, once the full story about the deleted “lost” e-mails is revealed.
And evidence enough for impeachment should emerge in their trials to give reason for all federal legislators to impeach. Otherwise, let the state legislatures lead the way.
Today is a good day NOT to be a Republican!
It seems to me like Gerald Ford issued a blanket pardon for a bunch of people implicated in Watergate, including Richard Nixon, for crimes they either committed or may have committed. I’m pretty sure Nixon was pardoned, and he was never convicted of anything.
I agree that entire lot of them should be impeached, indicted and/or incarcerated, starting with Rove and Hadley, going through Bush and Cheney and on to Brownback, Kyl, Graham and anyone and everyone else in this misadministration. Enough is enough already. I just hope that if Rove and Hadley are indicted the timing is such that it explodes in the early to mid summer so that the stench of Republican corruption will be fresh in the nostrils of the American voter. There has to be a point at which Democratic candidates can get a majority that will be large enough that even Diebold can’t overthrow it.
IIRC, first Nixon was named an “unindicted co-conspirator” by the special prosecutor, then he was impeached, but resigned before he could be tried.
Shortly thereafter Ford pardoned him, to “put this national nightmare behind us” (or some such language; I was 13 or 14 at the time, LOL).
So apparently you can be pardoned in advance.
I haven’t Googled it, but I think his words were “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
Oh, how I long for a successor to His Nibs to say that in a slightly different context. Preferably involving frog-marching.
I checked on it, and you got the quote right. it’s from Ford’s speech upon taking office.
My diary Laissez Les Bontemps Resignations Rouler from January 4th this year posits
Wouldn’t it be lov-er-ly?
For all the uppity nonsense that they produce, I find this very humorous. Wouldn’t it be fun to watch them sqirm as well..damn them all to hell….If it can’t be done legally, what to do next..these guys are just a fun bunch of fools….They are loosing their credibility on a daily basis and most certainly on a hourly basis, it seems…Makes my little heart jump for joy, it does!!!!!!
I believe we’re reaching the point where we’re supposed to start laughing at the emperor’s new clothes.
If Saturday Night Live isn’t worth watching, it’s not for a lack of material to work with…
Republicans: The Party of Make-Shit-Up.
G.O.P: Grand Ol’ Prevaricators.
They’ve lied, cheated, stolen and obfuscated for 6 yrs. without consequence, why stop now?
They truly are shameless.
If one or both houses of congress are not seized in 06…<fill in the blank>
Peace
Tune in CSPAN-2. Sen. O.s reading the riot act to the Congressional Ethics Committee for not doing their job. Good stuff.
Perhaps it’s time we organized a little citizen activism. Here are links to (as far as I know) all of the TV stations in:
Kansas (Brownback)
Arizona (Kyl)
South Carolina (Graham)
These stations all have telephones, FAX machines, news editors, and time they need to fill every day. Perhaps we should alert them to the breaking story of how their senators have perjured themselves.
And I’m sure someone else can come up with lists of major radio stations, newspapers, and cable outlets that would be interested in what the Senators have to say.
It wouldn’t take much for just one outlet in each state to pick up the story and the others to run with it.
Since I don’t feel any donkeys about to exit my posterior something tells me no one is seriously going to make these Senators pay for yet one more crime.
You would think the budget that Bush signed into law that wasn’t even real would get more play. What will happen to that 2 Billion dollar descrepancy between the House and Senate’s version anyway? I don’t hear any Dems screaming about this at all.
Illegal? That’s a stretch, Boo. It does confirm, as if we needed it, the their slimey lack of ethics. Though given some of the justices’ disdain for considering legislative history (Scalia has made particularly sarcastic remarks), it would be amusing to see this ‘colloquy’ cited in an opinion — almost as good as watching the conservatives turn their backs on their beloved states’ rights in Gore ‘just this time.’ At any event, the legislative record is clear that there was no unanimity in Congress as to whether the DTA applies to Hamdan.
More egregious is that Scalia didn’t recuse himself after publicly calling jury trials for detainees “crazy” last week & dismissing claims that the Geneva conventions might apply to them.
Yesterday, a group of retired US generals and admirals filed an amicus brief asking Scalia to recuse himself after his remarks in Germany last week appeared to pre-judge the issues. “. . . on the grounds that denying Geneva Conventions protections to detainees at Guantanamo Bay could result in their denial to U.S. troops by their captors abroad.” They join the Center for Constitutional Rights & John Conyers in asking for Scalia to step aside in the case.
Co-counsel for Hamdan at ScotusBlog appear to think it went well:
Marjorie Cohn’s Supremes Consider Kangaroo Courts is a good wrap-up.
Talk Lef has more links to articles on the case.
Are you saying there would be no criminal liability in the course of using that colloquy as an official document?
Ever hear of a prosecutor being criminally charged for knowingly presenting false evidence? Or withholding exculpatory evidence? Worst that ever happens is they get hauled up before the State Bar Association.
This is just an amicus brief — they’re not even a party to the suit.
It’s a dishonest, misleading attempt to present their spin as the word of the Senate. A Senate ethics investigation might be in order . . .
what will happen and what should happen are totally different.
Prosecutorial misconduct, illegal activity by govt agencies and integrity lapses in the DoJ are how we got into this mess in the first place. If you say we should continue to accept this as the norm then any other change is useless.
If that exchange did not happen live on the floor but it was entered into the record as though it did and then used to present to the court, doesn’t that constitute fraud? If 2 or more deliberately act to misrepresent information or create fraudulent government documents, I believe that moves into felonies and conspiracy, doesn’t it?
i think an aggressive prosecutor could make that case, and I think the Senate ethics committee should make that case.
I know there’s much more to it but Graham has been a dangerous influence in other matters and it at least appears to be a deliberate attempt to limit due process rights. He’s the one that was winking back and forth with Gonzales about ‘going after those fifth column activist folks’ at the NSA hearings.