http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/05/president_obama_can_shut_guantanamo_whenever_he_wants_to.html

From the article:

The relevant law is the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA). This statute confirms the president’s power to wage war against al-Qaida and its associates, which was initially given to him in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed shortly after 9/11. The NDAA also authorizes the president to detain enemy combatants, and bans him from transferring Guantanamo detainees to American soil.

The NDAA does not, however, ban the president from releasing detainees. Section 1028 authorizes him to release them to foreign countries that will accept them—the problem is that most countries won’t, and others, like Yemen, where about 90 of the 166 detainees are from, can’t guarantee that they will maintain control over detainees, as required by the law.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/why-we-defend-terrorists-20130502

From the article:

I see it as a civil-liberties issue. I think the concept of the war on terror, calling it a "war" was a mistake. I’ve spent years defending people caught up in the war on drugs, and I’ve seen the abuse that comes with seeing war rhetoric.... The use of war rhetoric in our court system becomes very dangerous, and it quickly erodes civil liberties.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113079/sandra-day-oconnor-barry-goldwater-letter-bush-vital-court#

From the article:

Although most of O’Connor’s papers are private, her legendary secrecy could not prevent the publication of her correspondence with others, including Goldwater, who saved her letters to him. On November 1, 1988, then-sitting Justice O’Connor wrote to Goldwater to bemoan the state of the nation on the eve of the presidential contest between Democrat Michael Dukakis and Republican George H.W. Bush.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-apuzzo/voices-raised-in-resistan_b_3029488.html

From the article:

It was at Terezín in 1944 that imprisoned Czech conductor Rafael Schächter led a chorus of his fellow Jewish prisoners -- most of them doomed to the gas chambers at Auschwitz -- in brazenly performing Verdi's Requiem before the very Nazis who had condemned them to death. One of the most complex and demanding of chorale works, Verdi's 1874 Requiem was originally intended as a musical rendition of the Catholic funeral mass. Rafael Schächter took Verdi's music and transformed it into a universal statement, one proclaiming the prisoners' unbroken spirit and warning of God's coming wrath against their Nazi captors.

Includes trailer of PBS special.

https://plus.google.com/+nytimes/posts/NuEFJecvX8V#+nytimes/posts/NuEFJecvX8V

Description:

The movie "Traffic" tells the story of a Mexican informant who helps the U.S. fight drug trafficking from Mexico. But there are many details in the film that aren't at all like the reality of the life of Luis Octavio López Vega, an informant abandoned by the Americans and sought by Mexican authorities who accuse him of colluding in narcotics trafficking. Watch this video about the differences between Hollywood and real life in the Drug War.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2013/04/26/61511/responding-to-the-assad-regimes-likely-use-of-chemical-weapons/

From the article:

Together, the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons and the regional strain of the refugee crisis call for additional actions from the United States, its regional partners and allies, and the international community as a whole.
 
American strategy so far has aimed at using tools short of direct and overt U.S. intervention to bring an end to the Assad regime.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/29/heracleion-photos-lost-egyptian-city_n_3178208.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009#slide=2390624

 

I guess I could put this under humor/wtf:

http://www.bjpenn.com/tito-ortiz-wants-to-unretire-to-stop-jon-jones-from-breaking-his-record/

Quick note: I see that my fingers were too fast or my eyes too slow. Privacy is is found in first, third, fourth, fifth and ninth. If I spell it out, maybe I'll get it right. Sheesh, and with apologies.

"Looking back, O'Connor said, she isn't sure the high court should have taken the case."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-sandra-day-oconnor-edit-board-20130427,0,1201477.story

OK, but Griswold says 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9. With its specificity, my answer to "does" would still be no.

And some point, Bones needs to get his due in the "best fighter pound for pound" discussion.

Does or should?

If does, no.

Why? Second is not one of the amendments from which a penumbra emanates.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/26/syria_chemical_weapons_strategy_obama

From the article:

You've got to hand it to him. Bashar al-Assad may be a cruel and ruthless dictator, but he does know how to play his cards. His careful, incremental introduction of chemical weapons into the Syrian conflict has turned President Barack Obama's clear red line into an impressionist watercolor, undermining the credible threat of U.S. military intervention. Despite Obama's statement on Friday that "we've crossed a line," Assad knows that the United States does not want to be dragged into a Middle Eastern civil war and is attempting to call Obama's bluff.

http://trumanproject.org/doctrine-blog/north-korea-never-a-threat-to-take-lightly/

From the article:

I suspect what kept me up at night is still what keeps up whoever is in that job now.  Trash talk by North Korea is nothing new, but the focus is on what are they actually doing with their military forces.  Media reports government officials saying they have not seen signs of North Korea mobilizing its military forces.  I’d say that in and of itself means little.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/26/the-ball-is-in-your-court-mr-president.html

From the article:

The Bush administration’s weapons-of-mass-destruction debacle in Iraq unfortunately means that only a UN confirmation of Syrian chemical weapons use will have real international credibility. The U.S., U.K., and Israeli intelligence assessments carry too much baggage to convince skeptics. Even George W. Bush recognized this in 2007, when he told Israel he could not use the American military to destroy a North Korean nuclear reactor built in Syria because of the legacy of his botched intelligence on Iraq.

But going to the United Nations needs to be done with alacrity like Bush’s father did after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The key is to get Moscow to accept that use of chemical weapons crosses the line—and to demand concerted international action, even if it goes against Vladimir Putin’s man Assad. With U.N. proof, Putin can be boxed in. China will not stand alone against a U.N. Security Council consensus. That will leave Assad with only Iran and Hezbollah as allies.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/04/recess-appointments-defended-2/

From the article:

The Obama administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to restore the President’s power to fill vacancies in government posts when the Senate is out of town. The petition argued that the D.C. Circuit Court got it wrong in January in sharply curtailing that authority.  (The Circuit Court’s ruling — discussed in this earlier post – is attached as an appendix to the petition but also can be read here.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-korematsu-and-the-dangers-of-waiving-constitutional-rights/2013/04/24/75586ca6-ac3e-11e2-b6fd-ba6f5f26d70e_story.html

Two of the three most infamous Supreme Court decisions were erased by events. The Civil War and postwar constitutional amendments effectively overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could never have rights that whites must respect. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld legally enforced segregation, was undone by court decisions and legislation.

The third, Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the president’s wartime power to sweep Americans of disfavored racial groups into concentration camps, elicited a 1988 congressional apology. Now Peter Irons, founder of the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project at the University of California at San Diego, is campaigning for a Supreme Court “repudiation” of the Korematsu decision and other Japanese internment rulings. Such repudiation, if it occurred, would be unprecedented.

An essay Irons is circulating among constitutional law professors whose support he seeks is timely reading in today’s context of anti-constitutional presidencies, particularly regarding war powers.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the military to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded.” So some 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them born here, were sent to camps in desolate Western locations. Supposedly, this was a precaution against espionage and sabotage. Actually, it rested entirely on the racial animus of Gen. John DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command.

Using government records, Irons has demonstrated that because senior officials, including Solicitor General Charles Fahy, committed “numerous and knowing acts of governmental misconduct,” the Supreme Court based its decision on “records and arguments that were fabricated and fraudulent.” Officials altered and destroyed evidence that would have revealed the racist motives for the internments. And to preserve the pretext of a “military necessity” for the concentration camps, officials suppressed reports on the lack of evidence of disloyalty or espionage by Japanese Americans.

The 1943 “Final Report” on Japanese “evacuation,” prepared under DeWitt’s direction and signed by him, said a Japanese invasion was probable, that “racial characteristics” of Japanese Americans predisposed them to assist the invasion, and that it was “impossible” to distinguish loyal from disloyal Japanese American citizens, if there were any. “The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second- and third-generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted.”

When War Department officials objected to such assertions and demanded revisions, DeWitt ordered all copies and records of the original report destroyed, though one copy escaped DeWitt’s cover-up. The court, however, never saw it, remaining unaware of the racist basis of the theory of internment’s “military necessity.”

Also kept from the court was a report, prepared for the Chief of Naval Operations and made available to DeWitt, estimating potentially disloyal Japanese as just 3 percent of the Japanese American population and declaring that these were “already fairly well known to naval intelligence” and could be quickly apprehended, if necessary. The suppressed report’s conclusion: “The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion, largely because of the physical characteristics of the people (and) should be handled on the basis of the individual. . . and not on a racial basis.”

Fahy ignored an assistant attorney general’s warning that not advising the court of this report would constitute “suppression of evidence.” Furthermore, DeWitt justified internment because “the interception of unauthorized radio communications” emanating from along the coast “conclusively” accounted for Japanese submarine attacks on U.S. ships.

The FBI, however, reported “no information” of “any espionage activity ashore or . . . illicit shore-to-ship signaling.” The Federal Communications Commission investigated “hundreds” of reports of suspicious radio communications but found nothing to confirm DeWitt’s accusations. Yet Fahy in his oral argument assured the court he could guarantee the veracity of “every line, every word, and every syllable” of DeWitt’s report, and that “no person in any responsible position has ever taken a contrary position.”

The Korematsu decision reflected perennial dangers: panic and excessive deference, judicial and other, to presidents or others who would suspend constitutional protections in the name of wartime exigencies.

It is less important that the decision be repudiated than that it be remembered. Especially by those currently clamoring, since Boston, for a U.S. citizen — arrested in America and concerning whom there is no evidence of a connection with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other terror network — to be detained by the military as an “enemy combatant.” The Korematsu case is a reminder that waiving constitutional rights is rarely necessary and rarely ends well.

I look forward to more on this. I asked a sitting US senator about this yesterday. He expressed continued, genine concern in the ongoing investigation.

Any friend of yours, sir, will be greeted with respect.

Welcome, Donald, and thank you for joining our ongoing conversations.

http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/operations/296145-white-house-intelligence-says-syrias-assad-used-chemical-weapons

From the article:

The White House told senators Thursday that the intelligence community believes Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons in Syria, crossing a “red line” set by President Obama.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/sequester_flight_delays_breed_confusion-224324-1.html?ET=rollcall:e15540:105450a:&st=email&pos=eam

From the article:

At a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Wednesday morning, Chairman Harold Rogers blasted the FAA for not providing sufficient information about the looming cuts.

“Not a word, not a breath. You didn’t forewarn us that this was coming,” the Kentucky Republican said. “You didn’t ask advice about how we should handle it. You didn’t inform the Congress of this sequester impact and what you plan to do about it. In fact, the entire administration has done the same thing.”

However, Congress did receive formal warning from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood as early as February. From the White House briefing room, LaHood said he was trying to “wake up” Republicans to the fact that more than 100 regional airport towers would close and passengers would see delays at major airports once furloughs took effect.

Earlier that month, LaHood also wrote a letter to Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., noting that significant furloughs would be applied to safety workers and air traffic controllers. Some lawmakers actually criticized administration officials for fear-mongering about the potential consequences of the budget sequester at the time warnings such as LaHood’s were made.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/us/25miranda-text.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print

"There may be exceptional cases in which, although all relevant public safety questions have been asked, agents nonetheless conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat, and that the government's interest in obtaining this intelligence outweighs the disadvantages of proceeding with unwarned interrogation. [4] In these instances, agents should seek SAC approval to proceed with unwarned interrogation after the public safety questioning is concluded. Whenever feasible, the SAC will consult with FBI-HQ (including OGC) and Department of Justice attorneys before granting approval. Presentment of an arrestee may not be delayed simply to continue the interrogation, unless the defendant has timely waived prompt presentment."

I think I am beginning to like Cruz. I made the same argument he did in this video in a gun rights debate about 2 months ago. I would say that "great minds think alike" but I think he is smarter than I am, so I might offend him by bringing him down to my level. Suffice it to say I'll be watching his senatorial career (and beyond?) with great interest.

Doesn't even do him justice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz

Good post, Doug.

Grateful for a promising professional challenge.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100642178

From the article:

What do American businesses want from their college hires? According to a new survey, creative thinkers and better communicators—both of which are said to be in short supply.

The survey of CEOs by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 74 percent said they would recommend a 21st-century liberal education in order to create a more dynamic worker. The survey of 320 business leaders was conducted in January. Results were released last week.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/ricin_case_an_inside_look_at_capitol_polices_role_in_investigation-224151-1.html?ET=rollcall:e15512:105450a:&st=email&pos=eam

From the article:

The Capitol Police took the key first step: It asked Wicker’s office whether it had ever had any correspondences with a constituent who had the initials “KC.”

It turned out, the Washington office had heard multiple times from someone named Paul Kevin Curtis, who in each correspondence signed off with the line “This is KEVIN CURTIS and I approve this message.”

I'm glad you liked them, Guro.

But there is no due process constitutionally safeguarded at the college. The college is free to use  "a preponderance of the evidence." And, as I said, for the most part I agree with issues being presented.

BoR doesn't really have a place in the college judicial board type of hearing.

That said, I appreciate much of the author's points.

http://www.westernfreepress.com/2013/02/16/united-nations-data-show-america-has-high-gun-ownership-but-a-low-murder-rate/

From the article:

You’ll also notice that many of the countries with higher rates of gun ownership have lower rates of homicide. The correlation is not 100%, but there is more correlation with more gun ownership = fewer homicides and less gun ownership = more homicides than the reverse.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/stories-in-the-smoke-what-a-bomb-expert-sees.html

Dr. Adam B. Hall, a forensic chemist and former crime-scene analyst for the Massachusetts State Police, teaches at the Boston University School of Medicine, home to a highly regarded forensic-science program. He had just left campus on Monday, around 3 P.M., when ambulances screamed past him on Massachusetts Avenue, which connects the South End of the city with the Back Bay, where thousands of marathon runners were still making their way toward the finish line, at Copley Square. Hall figured the urgency was due to an unusually high number of fatigued or injured runners. Then along came a bomb-squad truck, an unmistakable sight for Hall, who has processed hundreds of crime scenes, most involving arson and explosives.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/294461-second-poison-letter-sent-to-white-house

From the article:

Authorities have intercepted a letter to the White House that tested positive for ricin poison, according to multiple media reports.

The Secret Service has acknowledged the letter addressed to President Obama contained a suspicious substance but has not stated it was ricin, a deadly poison.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112906/where-obama-staff-veterans-are-working-2013

From the article:

Of course, this being the Obama tribe—a group of people who promised the most ethical, transparent administration in history; who gave themselves migraines by refusing to hire lobbyists (except when they did); who, during the 2008 primaries, held up the influence-peddling ex-Clintonite Lanny Davis as a shorthand for everything wrong with Washington—there is more than a little anguish over all the newfound riches. “Axe [David Axelrod] thinks all of us are lobbyists,” says one Obama campaign adviser.  In conversations with other Obamans, several were willing to damn former colleagues as ethically suspect. (Naturally, they downplayed their own transgressions.)

http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/terrorism/294375-boehners-hand-forced-on-benghazi

From the article:

Speaker John Boehner is trying to head off a GOP rebellion over his handling of the investigation into last year’s fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, by releasing an interim report of evidence by his panel chairmen.

A very fine piece. Thanks for the read, Guro.

 

IBM executives head to Washington to press lawmakers on cybersecurity bill
By Jennifer Martinez
04/15/13
http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/293715-ibm-launching-cispa-advocacy-tour


Nearly 200 senior IBM executives are flying into Washington to press for the passage of a controversial cybersecurity bill that will come up for a vote in the House this week.

The IBM executives will pound the pavement on Capitol Hill Monday and Tuesday, holding nearly 300 meetings with lawmakers and staff. Over the course of those two days, their mission is to convince lawmakers to back a bill that’s intended to make it easier for industry and government to share information about cyber threats with each other in real time.

“We’re going to put our shoe leather where our mouth is,” Chris Padilla, vice president of governmental affairs at IBM, told The Hill.

“The message we're going to give [lawmakers] is going to be a very simple, clear message: support the passage of CISPA,” he later added.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), passed out of committee on an 18-2 vote last Wednesday and is expected to come to the floor for a vote as soon as mid-week.

While the bill enjoys strong backing from industry, privacy advocates warn the bill lacks sufficient protections for people’s information online. The White House issued a veto threat against the first iteration of CISPA last year, due in part to privacy concerns.

Despite the opposition, CISPA safely passed the House last year on a bipartisan vote—and IBM intends to make sure it does again this week.

The technology services company runs the information technology networks of major hospitals, banks and electric companies—key infrastructure that lawmakers and security officials warn are top targets for hostile actors to launch a cyberattack.

Big Blue is also the top recipient of U.S. patents and owns a trove of valuable intellectual property that would be enticing to probing hackers looking to siphon valuable proprietary information. A report published by computer security firm Mandiant this year concluded that an elite military unit of Chinese hackers has allegedly cracked into the computer systems of more than 100 U.S. companies and stolen intellectual property.

The company believes the best way to thwart a cyberattack is to encourage companies to share more data about malicious source code and other online threats with the government and their private-sector peers so they can take steps to address it, according to Padilla.

“It’s our experience that the most effective thing you can do when a cyberattack occurs is to share information quickly between government and industry and between industry actors in real time in order to find where the attack is coming from and to shut it down,” he said.

"The key really is when an attack happens—and they will happen—is detecting it, and shutting it down and preventing the loss of data as quickly as possible. That's a question of information and it's a question of speed," Padilla said. "And often, the government will have very timely and critical information that banks or telecommunications companies need to know that there is an attack. Other times, we detect it first and sharing [information] with the government could serve to warn others that there may be an attack."


But companies are currently hesitant to share information about cyber threats they spot on computer networks with the government because they fear it may put them at risk for being sued. CISPA would address that concern, Padilla said, by granting companies liability protection from lawsuits if they share threat information with the government, allowing firms to get the assistance and data they need faster.

If a cyberattack is launched against a key piece of infrastructure, “you don't want a bunch of lawyers sitting in a room arguing whether to tell the government,” he said. “You want there to be clear and established procedures. CISPA will help facilitate that.”

But the cyber information-sharing bill has rankled privacy advocates from Washington to Silicon Valley. One of their chief concerns with the bill is that it would allow companies to share threat information directly with the military, including the National Security Agency, without being required to take steps to remove personally identifiable information from that data. Privacy advocates warn that could lead to people's email and IP addresses, names, and other personal information being inadvertently passed on to the NSA without their knowledge.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy and Technology and Electronic Frontier Foundation argue that a civilian agency, namely the Homeland Security Department (DHS), should be the first recipient of cyber threat data from companies. DHS would then pass on that data with other government agencies and departments.

Privacy advocates argue that a civilian agency is subject to more oversight relative to the secretive spy agency.

Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) proposed a set of privacy-focused amendments during the markup of CISPA last week, which did not receive enough votes to be adopted into the bill. One of the amendments by Schakowsky would have ensured that DHS is the first recipient of threat data from companies and would relay that information to other agencies.

"I think if you're looking just to maximize efficiency and you don't care about anything else, then we should give the job to NSA. But we have a separation of civilian and military in this country when you're talking about domestic cyber information," Schiff said at a press conference after the House Intelligence panel's markup of CISPA. "If we wanted efficiency only, then we wouldn't have a Fourth Amendment." 

CISPA would “shift the control of the cyber program from civilian hands to a secretive military agency," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, last week. "It'll be very difficult for there to be any transparency or any accountability if that shift happens."

Padilla, however, says companies need to be able to share threat data directly with the NSA “because that’s where the expertise is.”

“It really is a simple matter. The expertise in the U.S. government on cybersecurity largely rests in one place, and that's the National Security Agency,” he said. “They tend to know the most, the soonest about cyber threats and I think, frankly, there is a certain amount of feeling in the business community that you should be able to work directly and share information directly with the agency that has the most expertise.”

He said that IBM is open to working with DHS and other civilian agencies on the company’s cybersecurity efforts, but it believes the NSA has the most expertise at this point.

“We don't have a bias. We just want to work with who's got the expertise,” Padilla said.

During their fly-in trip, the executives also plan to press lawmakers to pass comprehensive immigration reform, which would include measures aimed at raising the cap for H-1B visas for skilled workers and freeing up more green cards.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/the-green-death.html

From the article:

In 2005, Experiment Station researchers were unnerved to learn that a bacterial disease called citrus greening had arrived in Florida citrus groves. Citrus greening, also called huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, is carried by an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. It cannot, as yet, be cured; while infected trees may not show symptoms for months or years, they eventually begin to produce yellow foliage and misshapen, bitter fruit that drops prematurely to the ground. Researchers consider greening a mortal threat: it is so damaging to fruit crops that in 2003, the U.S. classified the bacteria that causes it as a bioterror tool.

But not drone surveillance.

Behavior? Like voting? Riding a bus? Working? Buying a gun? Bearing an arm? Starting a business?  I can't think of a single reason why any behavior should be protected.

I have expressed reluctance about answering the question for two days. I then answered it the best way that I know how, based on my understanding of the question, the cases and the Constitution. If, after not wanting to answer to doing that very thing you still feel I am ducking the question, I have nothing left to offer the conversation. I wish you all well in finding truth in this question.

I will look forward to the next question, I guess.

Congratulations, Joe. Woof!