From Roger Fitch and my Friends down under at Justinian...

You're under surveillance

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, AUGUST 12, 2013

Attorney General Holder promised the Russians that the US wouldn't torture Snowden, and they still wouldn't hand him over ... NSA's "network security agreements" with helpful telecoms ... Stacking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court with Republicans ... Roger Fitch, Our Man in Washington, on the inner workings of a non-functioning democracy 

"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail" - Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of State (1929) 

"You need a haystack to find a needle" - Gen. Keith Alexander, Director, National Security Agency

*   *   *

IT was a surreal Post-Cold War moment, not unlike the day a humble Donald Rumsfeld visited the former KGB torture site in Vilnius, Lithuania - now a memorial to Soviet brutality - as the CIA tortured Pentagon captives nearby.

This time the irony lay in a US Attorney General writing to his Russian counterpart - whose president is a retired KGB Lt. Col. - solemnly assuring him that the US wouldn't torture or kill Edward Snowden if he returns to the US.   

AG Eric Holder also offered to issue Snowden a special travel document for the US - how nice is that?

Even if Russia had an extradition treaty with the US, some countries reject extradition to America on the basis of its civil and military justice systems.  

In 2011, the Canadian courts refused to extradite Omar Khadr's brother Abdullah, and last month a Dutch court denied extradition of a terrorist suspect possibly tortured in Pakistan with US connivance.  

The flight of Snowden - and the secrets he holds about National Security Agency surveillance (more here) - has led to an unusual outbreak of interesting political journalism in the US. 

Snowden: the US promised the Russians he would not be tortured

The Atlantic and FindLaw had ideas for avoiding surveillance.  

More suggestions are here, but they're all doubtful in light of NSA's just-disclosed XKeyscore program.   

The Guardian noted that the encryption services used by many people (see last post) can be bypassed by NSA through its collaboration with Microsoft.

Both organisations pay dubious "bounties" to freelance hackers who find flaws in computer codes, theirs or - in NSA's case - someone else's . 

The Washington Post described the "Network Security Agreements" the NSA enters with helpful telecoms, designed to make electronic communications insecure enough for the agency to save, record and read them unhindered.

It seems one of the companies signing-up was Telstra, at the time it was government controlled. 

It's no wonder the telecoms participate: surveillance deals are lucrative. Even the British GCHQ is getting paid by the NSA.  

*   *   *

Chief Justice Roberts (right): stacking the FISC

IN my July post I mentioned that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which unfailingly approves NSA requests, is packed with Republicans friendly to the security state.

Chief Justice John Roberts is doing the packing.  

More here and here.

Some say the real problem is a lack of adversarial proceedings in the FISA court, a view backed by two former members of the court here and here. 

Meanwhile, NSA has sent spooks to Capitol Hill to testify about the degree of separation among targets:

"A three-hop query means that the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but from everyone that suspect communicated with, and then from everyone those people communicated with, and then from everyone all of those people communicated with."  

Ars Technica has more. 

When justifying itself, NSA relies on its own unique definitions of common words and phrases such as "collect" and "foreign target".  

The agency resists FOI requests by resorting to the defence of incompetence, pleading aninability to search its own email database. 

ProPublica has a guide to the pending NSA cases, including a new lawsuit against NSA in federal district court in California, more here.  

It's not often you get the Unitarian Church and the NRA on the same side in a case.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is attempting to take the NSA directly to the Supreme Court in a mandamus action. Former Nixon counsel John Dean reckons it's a good idea.  

*   *   *

NSA: trouble searching its own databaseLAST May it was revealed that the Department of Justice had secretly seized phone records of the Associated Press, ostensibly to investigate leaks about the CIA.

Now, a more serious assault has been made on the media, in two federal court cases involving journalists.  

In the first case, reported in May, the FBI obtained a search warrant for the email account ofFox News reporter James Rosen, based on the "probable cause" that he had violated theEspionage Act.

It's the first time the government has suggested it's an espionage violation for an ordinary journalist to communicate with his whistleblowing source. 

Secrecy News has more. 

In the other case, a divided 4^th Circuit panel ordered James Risen of the NY Times to testify in the criminal trial of a former CIA agent, finding there's no journalist privilege.  

There's now an en banc appeal. 

It's enough to put US newspapers off reporting. In fact, as Kevin Jon Heller notes, it leaves the anonymous, WikiLeaks, model of investigative reporting as the only viable way to report on information the government classifies secret. 

A third trial threat to journalism has been the "Aiding the Enemy" charge against US soldier Bradley Manning, where the government argued it was "aiding the enemy" to release information to WikiLeaks that might be read by Osama bin Ladin, even if he read it in theNew York Times. 

The "Aiding the Enemy" charge depended on a single inapposite Civil War case.

Manning was acquitted of this particular charge, but several Espionage Act convictions were recorded, more here. 

 *   *   *

Carter: worried about democracy in America

DISSENT has broken out at the Lawfare blog.

Law profs Ken Anderson and Peter Margulies, joined by Lawfare's resident bush-lawyer Ben Wittes, filed an amicus brief in the DC Circuit's pending en banc consideration of Al-Bahlul, the military commission appeal.  

The terror-tragics support the government's position that the conspiracy conviction can be sustained even though conspiracy isn't a war crime.

On the other side, Lawfare's Steve Vladeck agreed with Opinio Juris's Kevin Jon Heller, who ridiculed the filing here and here.  

Margulies responded here, but Heller and Vladeck had nearly the last word.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon's man for Detainee Policy, William Lietzau - who helped George Bush set up the whole detention-commission apparatus - retired, and announced thatGuantánamo detainees should have been kept in Afghanistan and treated as prisoners of war all along. 

Perpetual detentions, trumped-up laws of war, assassinations and universal surveillance were all too much for Jimmy Carter.

In July he was quoted as saying, "America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy".

From Roger FItch and our Friends down under at Justinian

Straying from the rightful path

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, JULY 9, 2013

Corporate mercenaries settle with Iraqi victims ... While Abu Ghraib contractor ducks liability for torture ... Corporates and conservatives generally pleased after Supreme Court's latest term ... British newspaper scoops US media on major security story ... Spying on attorneys at Gitmo ... Our Man in Washington, Roger Fitch, reports 

IT'S hard to find a case where the US has strayed further from fairness and the rule of law than that of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, now on trial before a military commission at Guantánamo.

Nashiri was named as an (unindicted) co-conspirator in the NY trial of several men charged in the 2000 bombing of the US Cole in the Gulf of Aden yet, when captured in 2002, he was sent to Thailand for CIA torture rather than Manhattan.  

In 2006, George Bush decided to send some real terrorist suspects to Guantánamo, though apparently no one associated with war, the ostensible basis for Gitmo. Nashiri was among them.  

His torture, acknowledged by the CIA and documented by the ICRC, the CIA Inspector General and the Senate's still-secret report on CIA torture, would likely block any civilian trial in a US court.

It proved no bar, however, in the Pentagon's flexible military commissions, where he was charged with sundry "war crimes" occurring before there was any war, in a place - Yemen - at peace.

If there had been hostilities, the Cole would have been a valid military target.  

By contrast, fellow Guantánamero Ahmed Ghailani, accused of the 1998 US Embassy bombings in East Africa - another civilian terror attack - was successfully tried in US federal court.

No matter. Obama's lawyers charged Nashiri in a military commission.

In Nashiri, the Pentagon seeks a death penalty against a man its own mental health experts say suffers from PTSD; apparently, it's a result of CIA torture.  

While it wasn't the military that tortured him, torture - military included - has implicit impunity: every torture claim, arising from US adventures in Afghanistan or Iraq, and filed in an American court, has been ruthlessly extinguished (see below).  

Torture claims are continuing. 

*   *   *

THE Supreme Court continues to distance itself from anything associated with George Bush's wars.  

On its last day, the court denied certiorari in the civil damages case of Vance v Rumsfeld.   

After Donald Vance was imprisoned and mistreated on the orders of former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Obama administration went to court to block any legal remedy in the US.  

A divided 7^th Circuit en banc decision led to Vance's Supreme Court appeal. 

Precedent was against him: a 2009 DC Circuit case (also denied certiorari) found that at the time of Rumsfeld's actions, there was no clearly-established right not to be tortured while in military custody. Who knew?  

Abu Ghraib: contractors settle some claims, other thrown out

Nevertheless, in a recent development, one of two corporate mercenaries sued for the torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib, L-3 Services, agreed to settle with 71 Iraqi victims for over $US5 million.  

The other case, against the notorious Abu Ghraib contract interrogator CACI, was about to go to trial when the Kiobel case - interpreting the Alien Tort Statute - was decided (see May post). 

Immediately, the defence seized on Kiobel to have the ATS-based claims dismissed.

Federal judge Gerald Bruce Lee (Eastern District of Virginia) duly dismissed the claims in Al Shimari v CACI International , more here, based on his reading of Kiobel. 

More on the Al Shimari case here. 

In fact, the Kiobel rationale does not preclude ATS suits, given the US citizenship of the defendants and the fact that the case "touches and concerns" the US. 

More here.

Another ruling by Judge Lee, in Ameur v Gates, threw out the ATS claims of a former Guantánamo prisoner.  

*   *   *

Thomas: Former Monsanto lawyer sitting on Monsanto case

THE Supreme Court has ended its 2012 term, and Scotusblog has a statistical analysis of its decisions. 

There were many notable decisions, including an equivocal opinion in the pay-to-delay generic drug case. 

In American Express v Italian Colors, the Supreme Court continued its line of cases imposing arbitration on class action claimants. More here. 

Monsanto unanimously won its (Roundup-Ready seed) patent exhaustion case in the Supreme Court. Former Monsanto lawyer Clarence Thomas joined in. 

In another patent case, however, Justice Thomas announced that - contrary to a recent Australian decision - Myriad Genetics cannot patent a human gene that's a product of nature.  

More here and here. 

The Supreme Court has finally opined that actual innocence of a crime is important, after all. It was one of two cases in which the court sided with prisoners. 

Overall, conservatives and business groups have much to celebrate from the term just ended, comment here.  

Republicans are doing high fives after CJ John Roberts struck down the key provision in theVoting Rights Act. 

Justia columnist Marci Hamilton doesn't think the court's Shelby decision is such a big deal, but others disagree and more.   

Another last-week decision pleasing the Chamber of Commerce and alarming the plaintiff bar is Vance v Ball State University, which reduces employer liability for workplace harassment. 

Justia's Joanna Grossman considers the new supervisor standard invented by the majority.     

The "gay" decisions came out the last few days of the term, more here and here.

*   *   *

NSA surveillance and data mining

THE Obama administration relies on a certain self-censorship by the Big Six US media oligopoly (see graphic), and lately it's been left to foreign newspapers to provide much of the investigative journalism Americans once took for granted.  

Even so, it was surprising to see Britain's Guardian declared off-limits to US military personnel following its disclosure of a secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court) enabling warrantless surveillance of communications worldwide.

Big Media scrutiny of the NSA and its ex parte submissions to the FISA court is slowly improving, with reports about, e.g. the court's almost entirely Republican membership and its far-reaching secret decisions. 

It was left to the Guardian to reveal the FISA court's approval of the collection of US emails by NSA, now discontinued, and the US spying abroad that is causing particular outrage in Europe.

It's been great for encryption services, now used to thwart lawful government wiretaps as well as the less legal eavesdropping of the NSA.

The Army-banned Guardian is reporting that 26 Senators have written to the Director of National Intelligence objecting to the practices of the NSA.  

The NY Times famously learned about the Bush/NSA illegal spying in 2004, but suppressed its story until after the presidential election that year. The current scandal, however, is receiving immediate criticism. 

*   *   *

SETON Hall University Law School has a new study, Spying on Attorneys at GTMO (commenthere). 

Lawyers face other problems than spying, e.g. the cancellation (since rescinded) of civilian flights to Cuba, genital searches (clients, not counsel) and general harassment (see here andhere).

There are also convenient equipment lapses, e.g. the well-timed failure of a Pentagon computer server which caused the loss of Nashiri defence documents just before the hearing where they were needed. More here.

Luckily, it's only a death penalty case. 

From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under at Justinian

US soldiers are special: they can shoot, but they can't be shot

ROGER FITCH ESQ • WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 2013

US government has its very own radical Islam website ... Judge overrules some of the FBI's denial of rights to Boston bombing suspect ... Canadian to appeal Guantánamo conviction ... Guilty plea to invalid charges ... Pentagon citing Civil War precedents in Bradley Manning stitch-up ... From Roger Fitch, Our Man in Washington 

Boston marathon bombings: "public safety exception" for accused

THE amicus intervention in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum by the UK and Dutch governments has paid off handsomely, with the Supreme Court ruling against the suit by Nigerians resident in the US who allege human rights violations by Shell in their native country.  

Nevertheless, it's not all bad news for human rights lawyers.

More here on this keenly-awaited decision, including this symposium at Opinio Juris and aNY Times comment.   

*   *   *

THE FBI is having difficulty retrieving private data from the computers of recalcitrant tech companies.

Google, for one, is fighting warrantless "national security letters", and the government is cooking up legislation to punish them for resisting court orders. 

The FBI is actually quite adept with computers. A recent arrest in Chicago revealed that the agency proactively maintains - for the benefit of would-be bombers having trouble finding such sites - the US government's very own radical Islamic website, calculated to incite acts of violence among those still undecided.

Some US district judges are showing backbone in dealing with such devious FBI tactics.

A Houston judge, for instance, declined the agency's audacious bid to hack computers andinstall Trojan viruses on them just to gather incriminating evidence from the unsuspecting. 

In Boston, meanwhile, the FBI seized on the rarely-invoked "public safety exception" to the requirement of informing a defendant of his right to remain silent. 

In the Boston Marathon bombing, the FBI didn't warn the defendant, and questioned him as he lay wounded in a hospital bed.  

Then a federal judge had the temerity to intervene sua sponte and provide constitutional protections to the man charged in the bombings.  

The FBI had already used the "terror" opportunity to deny counsel, not something that's included in the Quarles public safety exception to Miranda.   

More here and here. 

Thanks to federal charges against the alleged Boston bomber for using "weapons of mass destruction," he could face a death sentence; unlike Massachusetts law, some federal crimes carry the death penalty.

No doubt we will also be hearing about the (shudder) Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.  

A recent decision of the conservative 11^th circuit highlights the chilling and perverse effects of the AEDPA in stifling even meritorious death penalty appeals.  

More here. 

*   *   *

IN a surprising development, the DC Circuit has agreed to hear the Al Bahlul military commission appeal en banc even though the votes to overturn the earlier DC panel's decision don't seem to be there.  

Scotusblog and Lawfare have more.   

It's not clear whether the court will consider Al-Bahlul's First Amendment and Equal Protection claims. 

Relying on the Al Bahlul precedent, Canadian Omar Khadr plans to appeal his Guantánamo convictions in the US, testing whether a guilty plea can prevent a subsequent legal challenge where the underlying charges are found invalid. 

Since his release from Gitmo pursuant to a plea deal, Khadr has been confined in a maximum security Canadian prison. In addition to his meritless MST and conspiracy convictions, he has the distinction of being perhaps the first "combatant" ever convicted of a "war crime" of "murder" for killing a uniformed soldier in lawful combat.  

To be fair, the dead soldier was an American; and that, of course, changes everything. US soldiers are special:  they can shoot, but they can't be shot.

David Hicks' original Aussie lawyer, Stephen Kenny, will also be lodging an appeal in the US, based on the Hamdan and Al-Bahlul decisions. 

Slate, meanwhile, has published excerpts from the memoirs of a current detainee at Gitmo; it's worth reading for the torture revelations.   

In April, yet another authoritative report on US torture was published, this one by a non-partisan panel chaired by a Republican, who was an official in Bush's Department of Homeland Security. 

The NY Times has more on the Constitution Project's 600-page report.  

Andrew Sullivan faulted the Times' previous torture coverage, while the Atlantic'sAndrew Cohen got the reaction of one of the torture victims, Omar Deghayes.

Gratifyingly, one high government official has now gone to jail for participating in the CIA's grotesquely illegal torture-abduction program: an Italian intelligence chief.  

There's still no danger of being jailed in the US unless, like John Kiriakou, it's for exposingCIA torture. 

*   *   *

Caitlin Halligan: top lawyer for DC Circuit blocked by Republicans, again

OBAMA'S highly qualified candidate for the DC Circuit, Caitlin Halligan, was blocked once again by Senate Republicans and has withdrawn.

She was one of 33 judges renominated in this session of Congress.

Now the DC Circuit is four judges short of its full complement of 11 judges (four additional judges have taken senior status).

With the prospect that Obama could add four Democrats to the present division among active judges of four Republicans and three Democrats, the Republicans want to reduce the number of judges to eight, and who can blame them for trying?  

More here.       

*   *   *

ALWAYS on the cutting edge of law, the Pentagon is citing US Civil War precedents to stitch-up Bradley Manning, despite the scorn poured on its newly–invented "US common law of war" in recent military commission rulings of the DC circuit. 

The US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces has meanwhile handed the government a 3-2 decision on jurisdictional grounds that allows the Manning trial judge to withhold court filings and orders, in a case brought by leading US media organisations.  

The three majority judges were all appointed under the Bush administration, and the dissenters were appointed in Democrat administrations. 

Steve Vladeck has more. 

Because of Pentagon obstruction, a volunteer is having to amass the record of Manning's trialfor other journalists.

*   *   *

Sandra Day O'Connor with her sponsor: second thoughts about Bush v Gore

THE US presently has the most conservative supreme court in perhaps 80 years, one that effectively perpetuated itself on December 12, 2000 by installing a conservative Republican president guaranteed to appoint partisan "movement conservatives."

Subsequently, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died, Sandra Day O'Connor resigned, and Mr Bush duly appointed John Roberts and Sam Alito, hardened Republican operatives and Reagan men.

Now, one of the surviving Republicans who appointed Bush president is having second thoughts. 

In light of what followed, Sandra Day O'Connor now wonders if it was a good idea for the court to take Bush v Gore.  

Slate's Emily Bazelon reflects on what might have been, while the Times' Linda Greenhouse gives some historical perspective on judicial regret. 

From Roger Fitch and our Friend Down Under at Justinian

Glory, glory, hallelujah

ROGER FITCH ESQ • SUNDAY, APRIL 14, 2013

Old guard rallies to the cause of female CIA agent glorified fictionally in Zero Dark 30... Latest from US Supremes, including forthcoming important gene patent case ... Secret no-fly lists tested in court ... DoJ's sweetheart deals with badly behaved banks and bankers ... George W. Bush's Liberty and Freedom Institute opens for business ... Our Man in Washington 

Brennan: ably assisted by CIA villains

JOHN BRENNAN has been sworn in as CIA director, using a copy of the Constitution without the Bill of Rights. 

Ably assisted by an interview committee composed of CIA villains, Mr Brennan is already busy advancing the careers of CIA operatives implicated in crimes, such as the acting and proposed director of CIA Clandestine Services.  

A right-wing Washington Post columnist was outraged that this worthy woman's (torturous) past might be held against her, just when it seemed the CIA's infamous glass ceiling might crack. 

Naturally, the torture counsellor John Yoo was also upset.    

More here and here on the promotion of the female CIA agent glorified fictionally in the filmZero Dark 30 (see January post).  

One of the accusations against this person is her unauthorised visit to Poland to witness the CIA torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now being tried at Guantánamo.

The CIA acknowledges water-boarding two other men held in Poland, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah and, interestingly, the  now acting CS director helped organise the destruction of videotape evidence of their torture - formerly a federal crime.

Both Nashiri and Zubaydah are suing Poland for torture in the European Court of Human Rights. 

More here.

*   *   *

"Who decides the laws of war?" - was the recent NY Times headline after the DC Circuit struck down convictions for faux war crimes the government obtained in Guantánamo's unique military commissions. 

Prof Steve Vladeck now offers help, with a guide for using real courts to collaterally attack rulings of the Gitmo commissions and to appeal decisions of the Pentagon's drumhead Court of Military Commission Review.    

Complementing it is a new history of the military commissions by the Wall Street Journal'sJess Bravin.  

One of the CMCR cases the government lost has been appealed.

The DoJ conceded the Bahlul case in the DC Circuit and asked the court to vacate the convictions of Al Bahlul in the light of the Circuit's decision in Hamdan II, which the government decided not to appeal.  

The Circuit duly vacated Al-Bahlul's convictions, but now the government wants a Bahlul en banc hearing.

Al Bahlul's brief is here.

*   *   *

US Supremes: plenty of pending decisions

The final oral argument docket of the Supreme Court for this term has been announced and includes the contentious Myriad gene patent case.

The Monsanto gene patent dispute has already been heard but, leaving nothing to chance, Congress has passed what is popularly known as the "Monsanto Protection Act".

It's part of a spending bill and benefits agricultural gene manipulators who - co-incidentally - contribute substantially to particular congressional "re-election" funds.

More here on this alarming development which, luckily, is temporary.  

The Guardian has more.  

In two new decisions the Supreme Court continues to undermine class actions.

Narrowing eligibility criteria tends to force economically unviable individual arbitration on plaintiffs. More here.

The two "gay" cases before the Supreme Court this term (see March post) have now been heard.

The second case, testing the constitutionality of the Defence of Marriage Act, involves estate taxation, but over 1,100 other federal laws and entitlements are implicated.  

The pay-for-delay generic drug case has now been argued.  

And finally, the Court has decided two sniffer-dog probable cause cases involving the state of Florida.

One case was decided in an unexpected way, and it's all down to "curtilage". Remember that? More here.

The other case went the other way, clearly showing the distinction between curtilage and carriage, or rather, porch and car.

*   *   *

In genuine dictatorships - and Britain - they revoke your passport and declare you an ex-citizen, as David Hicks discovered to his cost. 

In the US, expatriation is more devious.

Typically, it's done by means of secret "no-fly" (or "no-sail") lists, which can also affect foreigners with valid residence visas, as in this San Francisco case.

An Oregon case tests these underhanded practices as applied to citizens.

There's even a "no-leave" list for citizens who can't get out of the US, as an Islamic Oklahoman discovered: he now travels the hard way. 

*   *   *

Breuer and Holder: banks too big to prosecute

The Justice Department continues to make sweetheart agreements with giant banks responsible for the economic collapse of 2008, with no admission of guilt or prosecution of executives, even when their actions were clearly felonious.

Even foreign banks benefit, e.g. the settlement with HSBC for laundering nearly $900 million in drug money for violent crime cartels.

Attorney General Eric Holder has now admitted that some banks (e.g. HSBC) are just too big to criminally prosecute and so they haven't bothered.

Matt Taibbi has more on "deferred prosecutions" where - after a government shakedown - payment of a symbolic fine gets the bank off the hook no matter the crime.  After all, they're "too big" to let fail.

Lanny Breuer, the chief of DoJ's Criminal Division, has meanwhile retired.

Not criminally prosecuting anyone on Wall Street during his time as Assistant AG has paid off handsomely for Breuer, who will join a who's-who of other revolving-door Wall Street lawyers at Covington and Burling.  

The NY Times has more.   

The Securities and Exchange Commission's friendly settlements are also being treated with suspicion, by federal judges (more comment here), but it's not clear the judges have anyauthority to force the hand of government lawyers 

*   *   *

Bush: new presidential centre to glorify his deedsThanks to Barack Obama and a still-compromised Justice Department, statutes of limitations for Bush administration crimescontinue to run out. 

It's a good thing, too, as the George W. Bush Presidential Centre (Library and Freedom Institute) is ready to open.  

Many people supposed that a George W. Bush Library would feature virtual enhanced interrogations and the like, but there's no sign of torture cell mock-ups, hands-on handcuffs or interactive games with black-garbed rendition teams pouring water down the throats of helpless detainees.

Instead, the "public policy institute" attached to the library (or liberry, as Mr Bush might say) will evidently have as its function theglorification and justification of the appointed president and his deeds.

That's something Mr Obama and other ex-presidents can understand. They'll all be there for the opening. 

From Roger Fitch and our Friends down under at Justinian

Washington notebook

ROGER FITCH ESQ • FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 2013

Gongs for drone crews ... Military detention for civilians ... Australia listed among the countries that collaborated with the CIA's "detention, rendition and interrogation" program ... Court vacancies at crisis point ... NRA lobbying on judicial appointments ... Clarence Thomas speaks ... Roger Fitch - Our Man in Washington  

Drone pilots: all set for Distinguished Warfare Medals

"Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him."

Colonel Potter (M.A.S.H.) 

COLONEL Potter's observation applies in spades to the armed US drones terrifying Afghans and piloted by joystick jockeys in Nevada who hardly know their oft-innocent quarry. 

The Pentagon has nevertheless figured out a way to appropriately recognise its remote assassins, with the new, oxymoronic, Distinguished Warfare Medal. 

It's for desk-bound flight crews of "targeted kills", and meritorious hacking, too.

CIA teams carrying out similar long-distance work from Virginia must, sadly, remain unknown.

Plausibly, these gruesome video gamers could get Purple Hearts for "RSI at the joystick".

They may also need help for the stress they endure in executing people ... sorry, policy.

Unfortunately, a federal judge has ruled that the "legal opinions" authorising drone killingscan stay secret.

Mr Obama's legally-trained accomplices at "Main Justice" must be relieved.  

More here.

Some drone enthusiasts are clamouring for a special court to rubber-stamp "kill lists". Morehere.

Gabor Rona and Steve Vladeck have responded to the notion of a "drone court" to approve "targeted killings."

The controversy, which is now holding-up the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA director, has been fuelled by a leaked administration White Paper that offers a confused mélange of "legal" justifications for the killings.  

More here and here. 

Disappointingly, the terror-hysterics at Lawfare posted a repellent paean to drone killings penned by a professor at a right-leaning law school.  

The author even provided a light-hearted mock-up of a "baseball card" for assassination nominees. 

*   *   *

IN an important case last year, the journalist Chris Hedges and others (Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg) claimed that the military detention of civilians allowed by last year'sNational Defence Appropriations Act endangered the lawful activities of civilians, including the plaintiff dissidents, journalists and lawyers.  

In Hedges v Obama, the Obama-appointed NY federal judge Katherine Forrest departed from script and found these detention provisions unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiffs.  

The government has appealed in the 2^nd Circuit, andLawfare editor Ben Wittes has a link to the appelleeamicus briefs.

Though just a journo himself, the detention enthusiast Wittes views the briefs as "a lot of red meat for NDAA-haters from that special libertarian land where Left and Right meet ... I disagree with all of them".   

A brief more to Wittes' taste may be found here.  

Judging from the Supreme Court's new standing-based decision in a surveillance case,Clapper v Amnesty International  (opinion here), the Hedges  case is doomed.  

More here and here.

A new book fills in some details on the domestic spying program, now easier thanks to theClapper case . 

*   *   *

THE Senate's recent report on the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" program is secret and may never see the light of day (more here and here).

The Open Society, however, has an RDI report you can read now.  

Thanks to its handling of Mamdouh Habib, Australia makes the list of 54 countries who collaborated with the RDI.  

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VACANCIES on the US federal courts are now at a crisis level with some having continued for as long as nine years.  Details here. 

Mr Obama has renominated 33 judges blocked by Republicans in the last session of Congress.

Naturally, the National Rifle Association plans to lobby against nominees who believe in enforcing gun laws. 

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US Supreme Court: on the agenda - foreign treaties, gene patents and voting rights

IN the courts, an all-Republican DC Circuit panel has predictably found that Mr Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were invalid, despite the Chief Justice having suggested the president could end a Republican obstruction of confirmations by just such appointments. 

There's a new 6th Circuit decision on the liability of rating agencies for their role in the financial meltdown, and it comes up opposite from the recent watershed Aussie case.

A case in the Supreme Court will consider foreign treaties giving the US power to legislate domestically, not unlike Australia's Franklin Dams case. 

Another Supreme Court case contrasts US and Australian judicial treatment of human gene patentability and involves the same corporation, Myriad Genetics.  

In Australia, Myriad succeeded in patenting a human gene and that issue will be before the US court shortly. 

One of the most important cases in the Supreme Court this term concerns the Voting Rights Act. More here. 

Things look grim for voters, but promising for Republican politicians.  UC-Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has the legal background. 

On March 26-27, the Court will hear two "gay" cases, the overturned California constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and the restrictive federal Defence of Marriage Act.  

More here and here. 

Some late DOMA  briefs are here. 

The court has five options for dealing with the California case; the administration brief supports a limited right to gay marriage that could result in 17 states with gay marriage. 

In another case, the question of actual innocence as an exception to habeas limitations is before the court. 

There are also two cases of fatal missed deadlines. 

And finally, Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken at oral argument for the first time in seven years, but it was only an aside. 

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THERE have been interesting new developments - some encouraging, some not - in the South.  

On the one hand, there was the unseemly haste with which the state of Georgia sought to execute two men before their meds - i.e. the state's batch of the scarce execution juice pentobarbital - reached the use-by date, March 1st.  

Georgia only succeeded in killing one of the men. 

And then there's Texas.

It's a state with a 55 percent majority-minority, yet - thanks to gerrymanders - it remains stuck in a white Tea-Party time-warp, part of the vice-like 18-year Republican grip on the state government.  

Even so, the state police force, the Department of Public Safety, has announced an important innovation: DPS helicopters will no longer be engaged in shooting at undocumented immigrants. 

They must have drones on the drawing-board.