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RedditBy November 2005, three different federal judges had issued ironclad preservation-of-evidence orders in cases involving terror suspects and Guantánamo detainees. That was when the CIA elected to destroy tapes of the interrogations and waterboarding of two suspected Al Qaeda members. To the inherent criminality of torture, add contempt of court.
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The Nation Sues the Government
The Nation joins the ACLU and several other organizations and attorneys in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the FISA act.
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Noted.
Ari Melber tracks the continuing fight over FISA; Stuart Klawans remembers Thomas Disch.
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Obama and Iraq
His plan to exit Iraq falls far short of the complete withdrawal most Americans want. But it's a place to start.
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Noted.
Civil liberties, at home and abroad; saving Jeff Wood from Texas's death row.
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Supreme Politics
The Supreme Court's final rulings remind us that civil rights and a sane vision of the Constitution rest with the next President's judicial appointments.
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Fizzling on FISA
Obama and other Senate Democrats should not let a lame-duck Administration compromise our liberties in the name of pursuing terrorists.
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Noted.
George Carlin knew words could never be as obscene as wars; Barack Obama goes for the money, but at what cost?
As Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick write in a pertinent post on Slate, the destroyed videotapes would have had a profound impact on the Moussaoui and Padilla trials, the Guantánamo detainee lawsuits and the September 11 commission report. If that is true, then destruction of the tapes amounts to subversion of vital American institutions and is no sideshow but a central episode in the history of post-9/11 policy. Senator Joe Biden got it right: the CIA tapes' destruction, and the violations of anti-torture statutes they recorded, require a special prosecutor. Only such an independent investigation will be free of the Bush Justice Department's long entanglement with interrogation and torture policy, and the broader culture of complicity that ensnares everyone from anonymous CIA operatives to Congressional leaders of both parties.
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