Perhaps wingnuts like Bill O'Reilly trump up things like the phony war on Christmas in order to distract us from far more important assaults--like the war on the Sixth Amendment.
The latest front in this war is the attack on the lawyers who agree to represent Guantanamo detainees on a pro bono basis:
The senior Pentagon official in charge of military detainees suspected of terrorism said in an interview this week that he was dismayed that lawyers at many of the nation's top firms were representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that the firms' corporate clients should consider ending their business ties.
This is hideous on so many levels I scarcely know where to begin.
Charles D. Stimson, the senior Pentagon official cited above, must have taken his cue from those civilized, law-abiding, process-respecting Iraqis--you know, the ones who murdered three of the lawyers who were defending Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. We can presumably look forward to the day when Iraqi-style justice is carried out on all attorneys who dare to challenge the administration's extra-legal actions. But since drive-bys aren't yet in fashion in the better neighborhoods of the U.S. of A, Stimson thought he'd do the next best thing: ruin 'em:
I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.'s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.'s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out.
Guilt or innocence are immaterial- what matters to the Red Queens is that you are accused. How long before Sean Hannity determines that lawyers representing prisoners are enemies of the state?
Stimson's comments are apparently not an isolated incident:
Sources among the heroic community of pro bono lawyers who are defending some of the innocent and some of the guilty at Gitmo tell me that Stimson's comments are not isolated, that there has been a full program dedicated to the harassment of Gitmo lawyers - surveillance, pettty harassment, pressure on their law firms.
Indeed, Stimson's remarks were followed closely by an op-ed by Robert Pollock in the Wall Street Journal which echoed the call for a boycott of the law firms who represent detainees. Sounds like part of a coordinated program to me.
Stimson and his cohorts apparently got out of law school without reading the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees those accused of crimes the right to counsel. After all, even a PoS like Saddam Hussein had lawyers representing him. As Josh Marshall notes:
We've become greatly desensitized in recent years to shocking abuses of civil liberties and administration contempt for the rule of law. Even in that context though this stands out as an outrageous attack on the rule of law in this country. When high level Defense Department appointees are publicly calling for blacklisting lawyers defending clients in the civilian justice system you know we've gotten to a very bad place.
"A very bad place" is understatement. Our government is trying to intimidate people who are attempting to uphold Constitutional rights. Tell me again why this isn't tyranny?
More on Charles Stimson:
Charles Stimson Hates Apologizing
Charles Stimson Hates Korematsu
Charles Stimson Hates General Electric
Charles Stimson Hates His Profession
Charles Stimson Hates Resigning
Charles Stimson Hates Democracy
Charles Stimson Hates Being Alone
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