Closing Statement

by Katherine

Unless the Bingaman amendment is introduced Tuesday instead of Monday, or hilzoy has something up her sleeve, I think this is the last post we are going to be able to do on this subject. It will also be the shortest.

First, I wanted to provide links to all the posts about the Graham/Bingaman Amendment in one place: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

[UPDATE: Also 14, 15, 16, 17.]

Second: you may be saying "you make some good points, but this is complicated and I'm not sure I completely agree." Or maybe even: "are you nuts?!!? You think I have time to read thirteen posts on this?" Well. If there is not enough time for you to even read all these posts--how in the hell is one hour on Thursday, and maybe a few more hours tomorrow, enough time for the Senate to deliberate on this bill? Why on earth is this being pushed through on an appropriations bill, with no hearings, no debate, on the strength of arguments that are (deliberately or inadvertantly) quite misleading?  When the Senators providing the margin of victory seem unaware of some key facts and of the legal implications of what they're doing? We're talking about habeas corpus here. We're talking about indefinite detention under conditions that have prompted a large number of suicide attempts. We're talking about serious charges of abuse. We're talking about human beings, some of whom are terrorists and some of whom aren't--some of whom even the pathetic CSRT process has determined are innocent. Could we maybe wait a few weeks, hold a hearing or two, have some real negotiations?

Third: if you agree, if not with our conclusions, than at least that this is maybe important and complicated enough that we could stand to wait a few weeks, please call your senators, and ask them to vote for Jeff Bingaman's S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042. And please consider asking other people to do the same.

p.s. thanks to the regular authors here for being good sports about the temporary hijacking. carry on. --K

Comments

[Andreas Paulus]

Catherine,
Great research and argumentation! However, I fear that we would need one brief (!) collection of your arguments, rather than a collection of Graham's arguments with your objections. Thank you so much for your tremendous work! Andreas

[Katherine]

sorry--I'm out of time & need to go to work.

[BroD]

BRAVA! Thanks for grabbing this issue and sounding the clarion. You have done great service.

[cleek]

i'd call my Senators... but since they're Dole and Burr - Bush sycophants.

[Gromit]

cleek, do it anyway. My Senators are Isaakson and Chambliss. Totally lost causes, I'm sure. But it's still important to make our voices heard.

[Amanda]

I called (PA Senators). It seems so little to do. Will ask friends to call as well. Thank you both, hilzoy and Katherine, for your unbelievable dedication to documenting and advocating on this issue.

[Alison]

Thank you for doing this! I faxed my senators, and I've been trying to call all morning but Allen shunts to a recorded message and Warner just gives a busy signal.

[Urinated State of America]

Thanks so much for doing this.

[Matt Weiner]

Like everyone else, thanks.

[Gromit]

I, for one, would love to see Katherine get her posting privileges back. I know, I know, it's always easy to volunteer other peoples' time, so I'll understand if she declines.

[washerdreyer]

I can't, off the top of my head, think of what venue would publish it (due mostly to the conventions about how long law review articles are), but I think this series of posts is of publishable quality.

[CaseyL]

I think both of Washington's Senators will vote for the Bingaman amendment.

Murray's office person said "Since she opposed the Graham Amendment, I imagine she'll support the Bingaman Amendment."

And Cantwell's office person wanted to know the number of the Amendment, which I thought was interesting. Are that many being proposed, back and forth, that it's hard to keep track of which is which? I don't mean this as a snarky question at all. If "Amendment Number 2517" is in any way ordinal, that's one hell of a lot of amendments; and no wonder Senators can't tell the players without a scorecard!

[Anarch]

Kudos? Brava? Whatever the appropriate response, thank you for this series.

[washerdreyer]

Ok, so the Bingaman amendment strikes everything after page 3, line 3 from the Graham amendment. Even looking at this .pdf, I can't figure out where page three line three is. I assume it's "(d)Judicial Review of Detention of Enemy Combatants.--", but what text did whomever figured this out use?

[rilkefan]

Thank you for your service to the country.

[the remnants of rilkefan's exploded head]

ditto.

[Gary Farber]

Euro investigations into CIA operations.

[Glenn]

Washerdreyer, I don't have a link right now, but I did see the free-standing version of the Graham amendment and, as you surmised, page 3, line 3 is subsection (d), "Judicial Review of Enemy Combatants." That entire subsection is what's stricken by the Bingaman Amendment, at least as originally introduced.

[realFedUp]

Where does this stand in the Senate right now? I haven't had a chance to watch Cspan.

Thanks for any info.

[rilkefan]

Firedoglake says habeas c. has been chucked - took less than an hour. Nothing on google news.

[hilzoy]

The Senate's roll call page has no such info, and my occasional glances at CSPAN since returning from my inconveniently scheduled yet quite interesting conference have not shown this being so much as debated.

[hilzoy]

No, wait: they're starting now, and it looks as though Levin and Graham might have agreed to a new amendment, to be debated tomorrow morning, after the Bingaman amendment, which seems not to have come up yet.

[hilzoy]

Levin: Bingaman amendment to be voted on tomorrow.

[CaseyL]

Rilkefan, that's old news. Firedoglake is (rare for them) more than a day late reportage-wise.

The Graham amandment - the one that eliminates habeus corpus - actually passed last Friday. Yes,with less than an hours' debate, but still: last Friday.

The next steps we're waiting on are the votes on the Levin and Bingaman amendments.

[rilkefan]

Yeah, my bad, I should have waited for a clearer account.

[Katherine]

More stuff Graham got wrong.

[bob mcmanus]

I read the Slate article. "Got wrong" is very generous. The other Senators trusted Graham because of his history as a JAG lawyer. And he lied to their faces on the Senate floor about one of the foundations of Western Freedom, and about the case history and interpretation.

Even Salon has to use phrases like "...Graham was wrong when..." but then starts a paragraph "Lindsay Graham must have known all this." A ex-JAG, bringing an amendment about habeus, who doesn't have any understanding of the '42 Saboteur Case or more recent case law and cases pending? Not credible. He is a liar about the most important issues.

Two useful things, among others, have been learned:

1) We now know who Lindsay Graham is.
2) Republicans are not exactly rushing to the political center in preparation for the midterms. They don't look so scared to me.

[Mike]

The Washington Post just released an article about some sort of compromise bill that is supposed to "avert a showdown" over Graham's original bill (I'm guessing this means Bingaman's proposal).

[David in NY]

Please comment on the alleged compromise. Does it really help?

[hilzoy]

Mike -- it's different. It still strips habeas rights, but allows courts to review not just whether tribunals follow their own procedures, but whether they are legal and constitutional. This is a huge improvement, but not (according to me) enough of one -- it still, for instance, leaves people who have been determined to be innocent, but who have not yet been released, with no way to challenge their detention.

Sorry not to post; 4 hours sleep last night, and probably more of same tomorrow, plus, somehow, I have to give a fancy talk. Ha ha ha.

[Mike]

Thank you (wasn't exactly sure the what provisions of the compromise proposal meant myself). I am worried that there will be pressure on some of the moderate Senators to vote for the compromise bill instead of Bingaman's proposal.

[Richard Silverstein]

AP notes that the Levin-Graham proposal passed 84-16. I note that Bingaman voted NO. Anyone have any info on how debate went on the Bingaman version?

Another important negative to this compromise language is that it puts the Congress on record as supporting military tribunals. I don't believe they've ever gone on record before this. This is bad in terms of Supreme Court review since the Justice Dept. can argue before the Court that Congress endorses Bush's usurpation of constitutional law.

I've written a few posts on this myself. The last one is here.