Quotes Archive: Civil Liberties
"The President and his allies in Congress are playing politics with national security, and that's wrong. Nobody is above the law and telecom companies who engaged in illegal surveillance should be held accountable, not given retroactive immunity. I flatly oppose giving these companies an out for cooperating with Alberto Gonzalez on short-circuiting the FISA courts and the rule of law."
Rep. Bill Foster, D- IL, who took this position and won a special election in a district that's been long Republican. So, other congressional Democrats, what are you afraid of?
"The issue of telecom liability should be carefully considered based on a full review of the documents that your Administration withheld from Congress for eight months. However, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people to say that we will be vulnerable unless we grant immunity for actions that happened years ago."
Rep. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, in a defiant letter to the acting president refusing to back down on telecom immunity regardless of Bush's attempts to scare Congress. Now if only the Bush dogs and the Senate will take the hint.
"From Frank Church and the bipartisan oversight protections of the post-Watergate abuses in the mid-1970s to Jay Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, legalized warrantless eavesdropping and retroactive telecom amnesty in 2008 — that vivid collapse into the sewer illustrates as potently as anything could what has happened to this country over the last eight years."
Glenn Greenwald, on the senators who voted to let the telecom companies and the Bush administration off the hook for extensive lawbreaking. We need not just more, but better Democrats.
"Seriously? The telecom giants will break the law, violate the Constitution, help anybody spy on you for any reason, ignore their consciences, ignore their responsibilities as citizens, but if they don't get their money, the wiretaps stop? And there's the saving grace to capitalism."
Keith Olbermann talking about some FBI wiretaps being stopped because some phone bills were unpaid.
"The judge announced on the opening day that he would recommend conviction and refer the matter to the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. This was before any evidence or arguments had been produced. Our folks were elated, but concerned that his somewhat rash statement would undermine the credibility of the proceedings. They had expected him to say this only at the end of the proceedings."
Anonymous Pentagon source, as reported by Scott Horton, about how the trial of Bilal Hussein in an Iraqi court is being rigged by the US Defense Dept.
"Holding hearings would put the evidence on the table, and the evidence -- not politics -- should determine the outcome. Even if the hearings do not lead to removal from office, putting these grievous abuses on the record is important for the sake of history. For an Administration that has consistently skirted the constitution and asserted that it is above the law, it is imperative for Congress to make clear that we do not accept this dangerous precedent. Our Founding Fathers provided Congress the power of impeachment for just this reason, and we must now at least consider using it."
Three members of the House Judiciary Committee, Robert Wexler D-FL, Luis Gutierrez, D-IL and Tammy Baldwin, D-WI, making the case for their committee to start hearings on the Kucinich impeachment resolution referred to the committee November 7. Full text
"You've seen here tonight people who voted for the war, voted to fund the war, now they have a different position. People voted for the Patriot Act. Now they have a different position. People voted for China trade. Now they have a different position. People who voted for Yucca Mountain. Now they had a different position. Just imagine what it will be like to have a president of the United States who's right the first time."
Rep. Dennis Kucinich at the Nov. 15 debate, making the key point in his favor: he consistently gets the big issues right the first time, unlike most of his competitors.
"It's a kangaroo court system and completely corrupt. Stalin had show trials, but at Guantanamo they are not even show trials because it all takes place in secret."
Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, quoted in a story about a whistleblower who calls the trials "unconscionable" in an upcoming Supreme Court challenge.
"And that is what is so frustrating -- to see this same mindset over and over and over again -- where Democrats say they have to capitulate or else it will be used against them, and then it's used against them anyway, but it's even more effective because Democrats haven't fought or made the case for their position."
Presidential candidate and senator Chris Dodd, R-CT, explaining Democratic failure to stand up against Bush regarding invading Iraq, the military commissions bill, and now the FISA revisions.
"Without further consequences on the table, Bush's historically low support, refusal to work with democratically elected officials in the coequal branch and mounting investigations into serious wrongdoing only serve to give him more 'freedom.' And with that freedom, Bush and Cheney are fighting to preserve the freedom of a convicted felon, defy congressional investigations and continue to undermine the law and the Constitution through spying, torture and detention policies. How can they be stopped? At times like these, Americans might want to consider what the Founders would do."
Ari Melber on the need for the threat of impeachment if Bush is to believe his actions have consequences.
"I haven't seen a proposal for a better way than presenting an application to the FISA court and having an independent judge decide if it's really the kind of thing that we ought to be doing, recognizing that how we view civil liberties is different in time of war. I have seen a proposal for a worse way and that's what the president did with the NSA program."
Federal Judge Royce Lamberth, formerly on the FISA court including on 911, on how warrantless spying is a threat to our own liberties.
"I've had various different threats and actions taken against me, it's a very very difficult thing to do. I believe it's the right thing to do. I was assigned this case, ordered to defend him, but then not given the tools in order to do it. I'm fighting, doing everything possible to make an adequate attorney client relationship. The government, the US government, has done plenty to hurt an attorney client relationship and make it virtually impossible to effectively represent somebody in Guantanamo."
Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, defense attorney for Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, on the obstacles the government puts up to prevent fair trials. Khadr was a boy soldier who was 15 when captured five years ago, and he is still imprisoned.
"After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness."
James B. Comey, former deputy attorney general, telling White House chief of staff Andrew Card he won't meet with him alone after seeing Card and Gonzales try to pressure a seriously ill John Ashcroft into signing off on the NSA domestic spying program.
"I will not yield sir. The District of Columbia has spent 206 years yielding to people who would deny them the vote. I yield you no ground. Not during my time. You have had your say, and your say has been that you think that the people who live in your capital are not entitled to a vote in their House. Shame on you."
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton D-DC, in the debate over granting a voting representative in the House of Representatives.
"Finally, the justice system has corrected itself and freed Wisconsin's unwitting political prisoner, Georgia Thompson. The former state procurement supervisor went to trial and to prison on the basis of evidence so flimsy it's scary. If such weak proof can put her behind bars, are any of us safe?"
Gregory Stanford, columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, on the conviction and imprisonment of Georgia Thompson, despite so little evidence an appeals court unanimously ordered her immediate release after oral argument: that doesn't happen.
"Unfortunately, since this administration took office, that professionalism and nonpartisan commitment to the historic mission of the division has been replaced by unprecedented political decision-making."
Joseph D. Rich, recently retired head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division's voting rights section, on the partisanship that overturned staff decisions on voting rights and redistricting.
"So we want to hide the truth? Don't want jury to reach its own judgment?"
Anonymous person in the FBI's Office of General Counsel in a handwritten note on a memo objecting to a proposal to record interrogations on the grounds they don't want juries to learn of methods used to extract confessions.
"This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi."
John Sifton of Human Right Watch on the government's claim it can't find the DVD of Jose Padilla's interrogation it's supposed to turn over to defense attorneys. Maybe the DIA couldn't afford the money for a second blank DVD, or the server space to store it. Or a videotape.
"I should also mention the use of fire alarms in trying to disrupt life. In the Special Housing Unit [SHU], a punitive section of the prison where I was the only pretrial detainee, alarms and emergency sirens would go off 15 to 20 times every single day, at 12 a.m., 2 p.m., any time of the day. It was a deafening noise that would continue for five to 10 minutes. It was clearly deliberate."
Dr. Sami Al-Arian, who was acquitted on terrorism charges, describing the inhuman conditions under which he was imprisoned. This happened in America.
"It could have been any of us -- New Orleans was like a police state. There was hysteria. He was arrested in his own house for looting."
ACLU attorney Katie Schwartzmann, speaking about James Terry Jr., a New Orleans resident who was arrested for looting on his own porch and held in bad conditions for seven months without charge, trial, or access to lawyers.
"There is a widespread belief, as well as a need to believe, that the men we're holding in Guantánamo must be bad people. They must have done something to end up there. They couldn't just be, in large part, victims of circumstance, or of the fact the U.S. government was paying large bounties in poor countries for the identification and capture of people with alleged ties to terror. If the bulk of the detainees are guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, if there's no evidence that some of them did the things of which the government has accused them, then it would mean that we locked innocent people in a hole for five years. It would mean not only that our government wrongfully imprisoned these men but that the rest of us stood idly by as they did it."
Anant Raut, attorney for five Guantánamo detainees, on why they deserve representation and why his firm does pro bono work for them.
"There hasn't been a torture sequence that my character has been involved with that there isn't some kind of a negative repercussion, whether it's emotional. It's very simplistic to try and take what we are doing in this fantasy, in this '24,' which is a television show and try and say that this is a referendum for torture or we are justifying the absolution [he probably meant 'abolition'] of due process or anything like that."
Kiefer Sutherland, who plays Jack Bauer on "24", on the attempt by conservatives to use "24" as a justification for legalized torture.
"Five years have gone by and we are still fighting a Sisyphean struggle. No detainees at Guantánamo or in any other detention facility have yet had a hearing in a court. They are again waiting for our challenges to be heard -- that is, for the Supreme Court, for the third time, to decide that they have rights. But by that time six or seven years will have passed since the first post-9/11 prisoners arrived at Guantánamo."
Michael Ratner and Sara Miles of the Center for Constitutional Rights on the anniversary of the imprisonment at Guantánamo of prisoners who have been tortured and had no hearing in defiance of two Supreme Court decisions.
"The appearance of these paramilitary fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gave us a grim taste of the future. It was a stark reminder that the tyranny we impose on others we will one day impose on ourselves."
Chris Hedges, writing about Blackwater mercenaries, and the ominous presence of a paramilitary force with no accountability and a religious motivation.
"There's an element of fear that properly ought to be instilled in people, and that has been in every previous world."
Vin Weber, Republican strategist and former congressman, giving away the game that his party is more interested in creating fear than security. The video of the Broken Government series is here.
"The fundamental fairness of the American people and legal system are among our greatest strengths in the fight against terrorism. We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation's history."
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis, on the occasion of an illegitimate president wiping out with his signature the most basic human rights protections.
"We seem to have a hard time letting people move on with their lives. We want them to come back, get jobs, raise families, be productive, and yet we deny them one of the first rights on the list — voting. If you are back in the community, you should be allowed to vote."
Tom Johnson, chief executive of the Minnesota Council on Crime and Justice, on the injustice of denying the vote to felons who have been released. The article says 80% of voters think felons who finished their sentences should be allowed to vote --- hey Democrats, got a voting rights issue for you!
"Why would Democrats allow 51 Senators to eliminate one of the fundamental pillars of free societies? I imagine it was because their pollsters told them a vigorous opposition would lose them votes in the upcoming election as Republicans pummeled them for being soft on terrorism.
Paul [Wellstone] would have filibustered.
David Morris, writing the fourth anniversary of Paul Wellstone's death, on how Wellstone would have opposed the disgraceful military commission bill regardless of the polls.
"The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."
Acting President George Bush using the term "Islamic fascists" just as I said the right was going to do. Here's what's wrong with that.
"Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors."
R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington post reporter, describing a proposed expansion of military tribunals to include anybody at all, for any crime Rumsfeld chooses, with the rights of defendants in the Bill of Rights stripped away.
"If he was like Elliot Richardson, he'd say, 'Mr. President, I quit.' "
Bruce Fein, Justice Department official under Reagan, contrasting Attorney General Gonzales, who let Bush stop the investigation of warrantless spying, to his predecessor who resigned sooner than fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate coverup.
"Here at Media Matters for America, we spend a great deal of time pointing out the news media's faults and missteps. But we do so because we believe in journalism, because we want journalism to fulfill its sacred obligations to the public, because we know that even in the world's oldest democracy, a free press is what stands between us and tyranny. The right wing, to put it plainly, does not share this belief."
Paul Waldman of Media Matters on how conservatives are attacking the very concept of press freedom.
"Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment."
Gen. Michael Hayden, who has been involved in running the NSA's warrantless wiretapping and now nominated to run the CIA, showing he's not all that familiar with the 4th Amendment.
"This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy. There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."
Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, on Bush's use of signing statements to change the law at his whim.
"Not only do these military commissions betray our commitment to the rule of law, they damage our reputation abroad and undermine our ability to promote the global rule of law as an antidote to terrorism."
Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh in a brief submitted by 21 former US diplomats regarding the case of Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantanamo.
"The founding fathers didn't trust George Washington with unlimited power. Why should we trust George Bush?"
Sean Patrick Maloney, candidate for NY attorney general, who plans to seek a court order requiring the acting president to comply with laws requiring search warrants.
"In addition, in the intelligence authorization bill passed in December 2001, we extended the emergency authority in FISA, at the Administration's request, from 24 to 72 hours. Why do that if the President has the power to ignore FISA? That makes no sense at all."
Sen. Russ Feingold, in his speech introducing his resolution to censure the acting president, pointing out the lack of logic in Bush's defense of warrantless wiretapping.
"No one questions whether the government should wiretap suspected terrorists. Of course we should, and we can under current law. If there were a demonstrated need to change that law, Congress could consider that step. But instead the President is refusing to follow that law while offering the flimsiest of arguments to justify his misconduct. He must be held accountable for his actions."
Sen. Russ Feingold, in his speech introducing his resolution to censure the acting president, answering the deceptive argument that whoever opposes wiretapping without a warrant opposes wiretapping Al Qaida at all.
"Anyway, the argument that the AUMF contained a completely unexpressed congressional intent to empower the president to disregard the FISA regime is risible coming from this administration. It famously opposes those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes."
Conservative columnist George Will in a column that shows the nonsense in Bush's defense of warrantless surveillance.
"How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed."
Russ Feingold responding to Bush's defense of breaking the law from the State of the Union Address.
"Cindy Sheehan, who gave her own flesh and blood for this disastrous war, did not violate any rules of the House of Representatives. She merely wore a shirt that highlighted the human cost of the Iraq war and expressed a view different than that of the president."
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-CA, on her guest being thrown out of the House gallery for wearing an anti-war t-shirt. Sheehan was quite roughly handled according to her own account.
"Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were 'German dogs.' They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds."
Molly Ivins on the bullying that comes with the patriotic fervor of wartime.
"Confronted with an executive branch that has jealously claimed every possible authority that it can, and then some, the Supreme Court must continue to assert its constitutional role as a critical check on executive power. Just how 'critical' that check is has been made clear over the past few weeks, as Americans have learned that the President thinks his executive power permits him to violate explicit criminal statutes by spying on Americans without a court order."
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-WI on the relation of the Alito nomination and the revelation of the acting president's breaking of FISA and the 4th Amendment.
"As for this administration, can the same people who leaked the name of a CIA agent for political gain be trusted not to use other secrets for political gain?"
Columnist Paul Mulshine asking how people who identified Valerie Wilson (Plame) for political revenge can trusted with information gained from warrantless surveillance.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
British statesman William Pitt in 1783, coincidentally the year Britain lost the US over such things as searches conducted without warrants.
''A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in a decision recognizing the right of detainees to a hearing even if Bush wanted to deny it. It applies to Bush's domestic spying too.
"Trust of government cannot be demanded, or asserted, or assumed, it must be earned, and this government has not earned our trust. It has fought reasonable safeguards for constitutional freedoms every step of the way. It has resisted congressional oversight and often misled the public about its use of the Patriot Act. And now the Attorney General is arguing that the conference report is adequate 'protection for civil liberties for all Americans.' It isn't." Sen. Russell Feingold, D-WI, during debate on renewal of the Patriot Act, on how the acting president has been untrustworthy with his power.
"Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security."
Benjamin Franklin by way of John Sununu, R-NH, during the Senate debate on the Patriotic Act renewal, in answer to those who can't comprehend limiting government power in wartime.
"As soon as they realized that the beating of the suspects was being captured on film, one officer tried to rip the camera off his shoulder. His press tag was ripped off. Eventually, they got one camera and started messing with the camera trying to get the pictures out. Fearful that they were going to ruin his camera, he showed them how to get the images out. His second camera was ripped from his shoulder at that time, and when he asked whether he could get his images back, he was threatened with having his neck broken, had guns pointed at him."
Tim Harper, reporter for the Toronto Star, describing an incident in the press censorship going on in New Orleans.
"That was it. That was the last straw for me. That was the defining moment I'll never forget. That was my epiphany." "What I do know is that any party that would find the words, 'Protect Our Civil Liberties' offensive or even threatening, is a party I won't belong to anymore."
Carl F. Worden explaining why a lifelong conservative and Republican can't vote Republican anymore.
