Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens writes in his new memoir, Five Chiefs, that the George W. Bush campaign's 2000 appeal to the United States Supreme Court over the Florida recount was "frivolous" and never should have been granted, according to news reports excerpted below.
President Obama's order to kill a U.S. citizen in Yemen with a drone attack was among the topics in our Justice Integrity Project round-up of significant developments last week. Other stories include increased criticism of Justice Clarence Thomas and disputed media coverage of the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstration and similar ones around the United States. See below for details.
Below are significant articles for this two-week period on legal reform and related political, security and media factors. The articles, including a strong representation from independent blogs and other media, contain a sample of news. See the full article by clicking the link.
Politico, Obama administration appeals ruling on White House visitor logs, Josh Gerstein, Oct. 14, 2011. The Obama administration is appealing a judge's ruling that Secret Service records of visitors to the White House complex are subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The decision to appeal the ruling to the D.C. Circuit would appear to be in tension with Obama's repeated pledges to operate the most transparent administration in history. The position taken by the Obama Justice Department, namely that White House visitor records are presidential records and not agency records, is essentially the same one that the department took under President George W. Bush.
Daily Beast, Surviving Clarence, Leslie Bennetts, Oct. 3, 2011. On a balmy Indian-summer afternoon in Waltham, Mass., a slender, attractive 55-year-old professor welcomes a visitor to her modest office at Brandeis University to talk about the historic scandal that transformed the national debate over sexual harassment two decades ago. Calm and as cheerful as her bright tomato-red cardigan, Anita Hill smiles wryly when asked if she suffered from posttraumatic stress after testifying at Justice Clarence Thomas’s 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, where she was pilloried for revealing the way she said he behaved as her boss in two different jobs. “It was traumatic,” acknowledges Hill, who teaches public policy, law, and women’s studies at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. “It hurt, and it hurt people I cared about. But I was determined not to be defeated by people who tried to make me out to be something I wasn’t.”
OpEd News, The Suicide of Liberty, Paul Craig Roberts, Oct. 12, 2011. Pat Buchanan's latest book, "Suicide of a Superpower," raises the question whether America will survive to 2025. The question might strike some readers as unduly pessimistic and others as optimistic. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the "superpower" is over-extended financially and militarily. The Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes have shredded the constitutional protections that gave American citizens their liberty. By dictate alone, the executive branch has acquired the power, prohibited by the Constitution, to incarcerate citizens indefinitely without presenting evidence and obtaining conviction. According to the US government, a secret executive branch panel now exists that has acquired from somewhere the unaccountable power to put citizens on a list to be assassinated without due process of law merely on the basis of an unproven government assertion. How does this differ from Stalinist Russia and Gestapo Germany? The transformation of the US into a police state has been achieved quickly and with scant protest. Congress and the courts are silent. The media is silent, as are the law schools and bar associations. Out of 535 US Senators and Representatives, only Ron Paul has protested the destruction of liberty. Editor's Note: Dr. Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, How the Economy Was Lost, has just been published.New Murdoch Scandals Revealed
Baltimore Sun, Frontline's 'Anthrax Files' takes hard look at FBI role in suicide of Ft. Detrick scientist; Report asks if FBI overstated case against Frederick resident Bruce Ivins, David Zurawik, Oct. 10, 2011. Nobody does investigative journalism on TV like Public Television's "Frontline" -- nobody, and that includes "60 Minutes." And Tuesday night at 9, the venerable series revisits Ft. Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, and the case of anthrax researcher Bruce Ivins who killed himself in 2008 as the FBI zeroed in on him as its prime suspect in the case of deadly envelopes of anthrax sent through the mail. According to this hard-edged report done in partnership with McClatchy Newspapers and Propublica, the FBI did more than zero in. Under tremendous pressure to solve the case that started in 2001 with anthrax mailed to U.S. senators and network anchors, the agency squeezed Ivins hard -- using every trick in the book to get a confession out of him even as he insisted on his innocence to the end. Ivins was a troubled guy with some distinctive kinks, the report acknowledges, but even FBI consultants in the case now admit that the agency overstated its evidence and never found a smoking gun to prove the researcher's guilt. In fact, evidence was revealed last summer that shows Ivins did not have the equipment needed to make the powdery kind of anthrax sent through the mail. That didn't stop the FBI then -- or now -- in acting like it found its man. 
Telegraph, James 'Whitey' Bulger was turned in by former Miss Iceland, Jon Swaine, Oct. 9, 2011. A former Miss Iceland received the $2 million (£1.3 million) reward for the tip-off that led to the arrest of James "Whitey" Bulger, the Boston mobster who spent 16 years on the run from US authorities. Anna Bjornsdottir, a former model and winner of her country's nationwide beauty pageant in 1974, is understood to have called the FBI after realising that her former neighbours were wanted fugitives.
Montgomery County Courier, (Texas), Judge seeks to seal his paternity suit records, Nancy Flake, Oct. 8, 2011. A Montgomery County judge is seeking to seal the court records of his recent paternity suit in Hunt County, a move that an attorney representing the mother of the judge’s child said is “to avoid embarrassment.” But Steve Jackson, the attorney for Judge Tracy Gilbert, left, of the 418th state District Court – Montgomery County’s only court dedicated to family law – said he moved to seal the records to protect Gilbert and his family from a man “who has exhibited behavior” causing Gilbert and other parties to “fear for their safety.” Reason TV, t, Oct 7, 2011. On October 4, 2011, Reason.tv visited the Occupy Wall Street protests at Liberty Square in Lower Manhattan, on Day 18 of the ongoing demonstration. The crowd was relatively small at about 300, and included educated but unemployed workers, college students and recent graduates, homeless drifters, performance artists, 9/11 truthers, and a not-insignificant number of journalists.
Government Forfeitures Protested
Washington Post, For Anita Hill, the Clarence Thomas hearings haven’t really ended, Krissah Thompson, Oct. 7, 2011. Twenty years ago, when Anita Hill returned home from the contentious Senate hearings during which she accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, people told her not to worry — her name would be forgotten in a matter of months. But two things have become clear this week as she has re-entered the debate: The raw tensions over race, gender and politics raised by the hearings have not been forgotten. And Anita Hill is acting like a woman who wants her name remembered. She is stepping back into the news by choice, giving a series of interviews about a book she released this week on issues of gender and race called “Reimagining Equality.” And she is attending seminars focused on the anniversary of the Thomas hearings, having become over the years a minor political celebrity.
Huffington Post, Democrats Ramp Up Calls For Ethics Probe Of Clarence Thomas, Jennifer Bendery, Oct. 5, 2011. House Democrats are ratcheting up the pressure for a formal investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for failing to disclose information relating to his wife's earnings -- as much as $1.6 million over the past 13 years -- on his annual financial disclosure forms. House Rules Committee ranking member Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), left, and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) on Wednesday sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee calling for hearings "on the pattern of potential ethical lapses" by Thomas, who, after years of filing his financial forms properly, stopped disclosing his wife Ginny's employment status every year between 1997 and 2011. During that time, the letter states, his wife made at least $1.6 million, based on reports from outside groups. "Public records clearly demonstrate that Justice Thomas has failed to accurately disclose information concerning the income and employment status of his wife, as required by law," reads the letter to House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and ranking member John Conyers (D-Mich.). "In addition, news reports indicate that Justice Thomas may have also failed to report gifts from wealthy supporters and inappropriately solicited donations for favored non-profit organizations."
Washington Post, The legacy of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, Ruth Marcus, Oct. 6, 2011. Even now, with the healing distance of two decades, the subject of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas retains its power to provoke and divide. It was 20 years ago this month that Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment surfaced, threatening to derail Thomas’s imminent confirmation to the Supreme Court. I spent the weekend-long marathon of hearings in the Senate Caucus Room, the majestic setting of soaring marble columns and gilded ceiling contrasting with the squalid details of Hill’s allegations. It was both riveting and horrifying. By the time the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings were gaveled to a close at 2 a.m. Monday, I -- like everyone else -- was simply relieved that it was over.
Huffington Post, Clarence's Questions, Part 1: The Case Of The Burning Cross, Oct. 7, 2011. Justice Clarence Thomas has not asked a question at a Supreme Court oral argument since Feb. 22, 2006. Many have commented on the meaning of his reticence, and Thomas himself -- who is as loquacious in speaking engagements as he is mum on the bench -- has put forward several explanations for his opting out of the lively back-and-forth among his eight colleagues and the lawyers who appear before them. But this series is called "Clarence's Questions," and not "Quiet Clarence," for a reason: As his sixth anniversary of self-imposed silence approaches this term and his third decade on the Court begins, it's worth examining the moments when Justice Thomas felt compelled to step into the fray. Court-watchers know that Thomas is plenty outspoken in his written opinions, where he often argues solely for himself due to his uncompromisingly originalist philosophy. Indeed, most lawyers arguing before him can already surmise how Thomas will vote in their cases, so his silence leaves room for them to address the justices who are more open to persuasion. Yet Thomas' silence has also left many casual observers -- that is, ordinary American citizens -- with the impression that the man either does not care about the cases or cannot intellectually compete with his colleagues. With help from the Oyez Project at the University of Chicago-Kent School of Law, The Huffington Post has compiled a comprehensive audio collection of Thomas' questions, including some "deep cuts" that had been left unattributed in the Court's official transcripts, so that HuffPost readers can hear Thomas and decide for themselves the impact of his silent streak.
New Yorker / Annals of Law, Partners: Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan? Jeffrey Toobin, Aug. 29, 2011. As the Justice has assumed an influential role on the Roberts Court, his wife has helped lead the public war against the Administration. It has been, in certain respects, a difficult year for Clarence Thomas. These tempests obscure a larger truth about Thomas: that this year has also been, for him, a moment of triumph. In several of the most important areas of constitutional law, Thomas has emerged as an intellectual leader of the Supreme Court. Since the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005, and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., in 2006, the Court has moved to the right when it comes to the free-speech rights of corporations, the rights of gun owners, and, potentially, the powers of the federal government; in each of these areas, the majority has followed where Thomas has been leading for a decade or more. Rarely has a Supreme Court Justice enjoyed such broad or significant vindication.
Presidentially Ordered Assassination
Forbes, Obama Crosses the Rubicon, Harvey A. Silverglate, right, and Daniel R. Schwartz, Nearly ten years after the rushed and largely unread Patriot Act was made law, the United States has entered into a new realm of secrecy, as a constitutional law professor turned President has brought the state’s secrets provisions to their logical conclusion: he has targeted and killed American citizens based entirely upon information he refuses to make public or submit to a duly established body or tribunal. The President’s move was as unprecedented as it was unnecessary, and rightfully makes many wonder not if we are at the precipice of a slippery slope, but rather how far down that dune we have fallen, and whether we will ever be able to scramble back up. As you undoubtedly already know, on September 30th predator drones flying out of a secret airbase in Yemen blew up a car carrying Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, American citizens allegedly involved with Al Qaeda. While Khan was considered “collateral damage,” Awlaki was the main target and a man who, based upon the President’s word, had been placed onto an official kill list. On Forbes.com, Daniel Schwartz and I argue that the administration’s actions were highly troubling, as they represented a heretofore unimagined expansion of executive power. A presidential-ordered assassination of an American citizen, without the involvement of either of the other two branches of government, is a matter of profound consequence, regardless of the heinousness of the target. In a constitutional democracy, we argue, process matters.
Reuters, Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list', Mark Hosenball, Oct 5, 2011. American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.
CNN, Holder blasts GOP critics for their attacks over Fast and Furious gun operation, Oct. 7, 2011. Attorney General Eric Holder, left, angrily responded Friday to Republican critics of his handling of a controversial gun enforcement operation, charging them with using "irresponsible and inflammatory rhetoric." CNN, GOP seeks independent investigation of Holder, Oct. 4, 2011. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee called Tuesday for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Attorney General Eric Holder was honest when he testified earlier this year about his knowledge of a now-discredited federal gunrunning operation.
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