Ashcroft claims his own personal opinion of what is right or wrong trumps the actual law.
He refused to turn this memo, which basically flies in the face of international law and precedents set at Nuremberg in approving the torture of prisoners, over to senators. When challenged, he acknowledged that the president had not claimed executive privilege to prevent the memo’s release. And it was pointed out that the law compels him to release if if asked to do so by the senate. He steadfastly refused.
(Good thing he’s not the Attorney General or anything, with that kind of attitude!)
What law is that? Specifically. Also, please provide a cite for the claim that the Senate has “asked” him do release the memo in accordance with this law you’re relying upon.
Listen to the linked soundfile on the page my first link above takes you to. It’s a recording of an exchange between a senator and Ashcroft, and the senator goes into some detail.
And after you’re done with that, perhaps you’d be so kind as to let us know what it is you wish to discuss here. I mean, what is is you want us to do this thread, other than hold yet another “Ashcroft Is Evil Embodied” imbroglio.
“Another”? Perhaps you’ll link to my previous such “imbroglios.”
In any case I’d think the debate was pretty clearly implied; sorry for not being more specific.
Is it within the AG’s rights, or purview, or whatever, to ignore law and precedent to keep such a memo from public view? Does Ashcroft have a leg to stand on? Or is he just putting another nail in his own coffin?
Hmm. I can’t either; no soundcard on my work pooter. I heard the story on the radio on my way into work this morning. Anyone know if there’s a transcript anywhere yet?
This is why I asked for a link or citation to the law at issue.
If Mr. Ashcroft’s conduct is violative of the law of the land, then he does not have a leg to stand on. His proper course is to follow the law. If the law is ambiguous, then he’s within his rights to follow his interpretation of it and wait for judicial clarification.
If what’s at issue is mere tradition – “The last fifty times the Senate has asked for documents, the AG’s office has provided them…” then Mr. Ashcroft is well within his rights and powers.
If the issue is prospective – “Mr. Ashcroft, give us the memo – after all, you know we can subpoena you and if you then refuse to comply, you’ll be in contempt of Congress…” then he’s within his rights to point out that they haven’t subpoenaed him yet, and are thus not entitled to the benefits of the law, as an example.
So it’s difficult to comment on the issue without being clear about what the law at issue says.
I never said any of the previous ones were started by you. I also never claimed that you’d participated in one.
Well, given the poisonous atmosphere in GD towards anything remotely to do with the Bush administration, no, it’s not at all clear what a person wishes to debate anymore. Why would you assume that we’re able to divine your intent?
I can’t listen to it either. But there’s a transcript available on the NPR site - for $4.95. That being the case, I rather doubt that it can be had without charge anywhere else. Copyright laws being what they are.
Why refuse? Never mind the legalistic manuevering. The memos, as revealed, are damaging enough. Clearly, somebody thought it was a good idea to explore the options for “coercive interrogation”, to seek some sort of wriggle room in a treaty that is about as airtight as can be done. No justification is admitted as exculpatory, zero, zip, none, nada.
Now, I suspect that if the memo in question had a handwritten notation from GeeDubya saying, in effect, “don’t matter what legal groundwork you lay out, I’m not going to approve any such nasty behavior, period…”, I imagine that document would be “declassified” with much the same alacrity as documents underlining Mr. Clarke’s case found themselves “declassified”.
As a general rule, people don’t hide things that exonerate them. The Bushiviks, as noted above, have no problem at all with swiftly declassifying stuff they think helps their case. Hence, one may reasonably make the assumption that they don’t want anyone to see these memos because they are troublesome.
It’s unclear to me how to address the charges set forth in the OP without recourse to “legalistic manuevering” since the OP explicitly alleges a violation of the law.
Aschroft is refusing to produce the documents. He’s not explicitly invoking executive privilege (actually, he can’t - only the President can, on his behalf - but that’s a nitpick). He’s refusing to produce the documents because, well, just because (accompanied by foot-stomping).
An additional thought or two: technically, of course, Ashcroft isn’t in contempt of Congress in the absence of a subpoena. There is a legal difference between a Senator (or several, in this case) demanding that Ashcroft produce the documents, and the Senate (or its committee) issuing a subpoena for the documents. A legal difference. Politically, it’s a distinction without a difference.
What will you say if the Republican-controlled committee refuses to issue a subpoena? At that point, we’re left with only the elucidator conjecture: must be something in those memos that the adminstration really, really, really doesn’t want us to see.
There is more than a little knee jerk obscurafication going on around here, and on the part of a Moderator, pledged to the fight against ignorance, too. Maybe the word doesn’t get out to the Great Black Swamp of Northwest Ohio as quickly as it reaches the Wisconsin Territory and points west. The Ashcroft story was on NPR’s evening news yesterday. The Attorney General appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, or one of its sub-committees, yesterday. The Attorney General was asked about the memos from the Department of Justice and the General Council’s Office of the Department of Defense which have been leaked to the press, notably The Wall Street Journal (fore Pete’s sake) and The New York Times and, I think, The Washington Post in which political appointee lawyers opine as to the loopholes in the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners. The Attorney General refused to discuss the substance of the Department of Justice memo and said that he would not produce it. The DoJ memo, as I understand, had not been subpoenaed nor was Mr. Ashcroft testifying under subpoena. He did not claim executive privilege buy he did talk about its justification – confidential advice to the President and federal decision makers. I suppose that the next step is to actually subpoena the Justice memo and the DoD memo IF the committee can raise the necessary votes to do so.
The whole thing leaves the impression that the Attorney General, and by extension his boss, are trying to hide something. There is a chance that the AG is off on a frolic of his own of the sort that he engaged in last week or the week before when he set off the terrorism alarm without consulting with Mr. Ridge. Mr. Ashcroft may be trying to raise his profile so as to make it all that more difficult to dump him in the unhappy event that the President is reelected. The AG hasn’t gotten much attention since the Adventure of the Bronze Boob.
I can’t imagine that there is any sort of endorsement on any of the memos that indicate that the President signed off on a formal position minimizing and restricting the scope of the convention. Since nobody is contesting the press stories on this thing the actual production of the original document does not serve any substantive purpose except to embarrass the Administration (“The United States would never do anything like that, Your Honor”) and provide a full citation for a whole pot of law review articles.
That is not to say that I would not get a huge kick out of seeing the AG face rubbed in it.
Apparently, you failed to notice that elucidator has pointed out, quite correctly, that this adminstration has no such principled objections to releasing information that it believes accrues to its benefit. Even classified information seems miraculously to find its way out.
And frankly, I’m not sure that it’s a good idea to defend the notion that the President has the right to ask for, and receive, unfettered advice about how we can justify torturing people we’ve rounded up on a hunch. If the President’s advisors know that their advice about how to circumvent the law might get trotted out for all the world to see, maybe they’d be a little more cautious about dishing it out. This is not a bad thing.
Don’t these people realize that they’re opening the door for anyone who, in the future, ends up holding American soldiers as prisoners of war to say, “Why should we follow the Geneva Convention? The U.S. doesn’t bother with it.”
I mean, isn’t it the same principle as not negotiating with terrorists? I mean, if you buy what they’re selling, they’ll try to sell you more.
2 USC § 192 is not germane to the situation at hand, because Mr. Ashcroft has not been “…summoned as a witness by the authority of either House of Congress to give testimony or to produce papers upon any matter under inquiry before either House…” Such a summons requires a legal document known as a subpoena, or, in the case of the production of papers, a subpoena duces tecum.
Would you care to revise your post in light of this information?
