The Van Hollen v. GAB Victory

- see also the Washington Independent's new piece, "A Myth of Voter Fraud"
The victory over the GOP and the Wisconsin attorney general's attempt to suppress blacks and other Democratically-leaning voters for electoral purposes reveals other groups and dedicated legal staffs busily at work, literally saving our democracy from the corrupt and anti-democratic forces that reign in today's GOP.

We have come a long way from the 1960s and Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler and 1,000s of civil rights workers in Alabama and Mississippi who were threatened with their lives (many were murdered), and jail as the white power structure and the internal states' security apparatus were used in every despicable way imaginable by Senator James Eastland, the Klan and assorted racists against the nigger-loving Jews as they were known back then.

Sure, in Wisconsin today the racism and anti-Semitism are absent, the violence and physical intimidation are gone, but remaining in Van Hollen and the Wisconsin Republican Party is the contempt for the voters who insist on casting their votes and making their voices heard in our democracy.

J.B. Van Hollen and the Wisconsin Republican Party deserve the strongest condemnation and should be held accountable for their lies and actions.

And let's take a look at the litigators and intervenors in the Van Hollen v. GAB et al case who rose to the defense of the Government Accountability Board and the rights of Wisconsin citizens to cast their votes, true champions of democracy who deserve recognition. We salute them today:

Democratic Party of Wisconsin
Madison Teachers, Inc.
American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin
Madison Firefighters Local 311
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
The Brennan Center for Justice @ NYU School of Law
The Campaign Legal Center
The League of Women Voters of WI Education Fund
American Civil Liberties Union of WI Foundation, Inc
Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union
Fair Elections WI
Daniel P. Tokaji
Milwaukee Branch of the NAACP
Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association

Landmark Supreme Court Win for Liberty Points Way for Dem Victory in November

Update: CCR Produces Analysis of Landmark Supreme Court Decision

via mal contends
The Supreme Court decision (in Boumediene v. Bush /Al Odah v. United States) is a historic affirmation of the principle of habeas corpus (in Latin, "you shall have the body"), and a rejection of the acclaimed right of the tyrant, George W. Bush in this instance, to imprison another with no sound recourse for the accused; in these cases, the detained prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantánamo.

Habeas corpus refers simply to the right of the accused to go before an impartial judge and challenge the rationale behind the denial of his/her liberty.

"One of the oldest and most basic legal protections, habeas corpus affords the incarcerated the right to stand before a judge and confront the charges presented against him or her. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has been sending habeas counsel to represent the prisoners at the base since winning the first Guantánamo case, Rasul v. Bush, in 2004, and applauds today’s decision," reads CCR's press release.

That's a modest statement.

It's fitting that CCR, an organization that grew out the civil rights movement— specifically Arthur Kinoy and the Kunstler brothers (nigga-loving Jews as they were known back then, and let's never forget, in the 1960s by the southern states' white power structures) and 1,000s more heroes of liberty whose names history will not record—researched and argued this landmark victory for liberty.

It is also sobering, as a NYT editorial notes today, that "... habeas hangs by a single vote in the Supreme Court of the United States—a reminder that the composition of the court could depend on the outcome of this year’s presidential election. The ruling is a major victory for civil liberties—but a timely reminder of how fragile they are."

Sobering, yes, but also inspiring of optimism for the coming November rejection of the Bush-Cheney-McCain crowd.

Barack Obama who is for the moment underperforming with white women will undoubtedly improve his standing as the campaign crystallizes how dangerous an instrument the Supreme Court has become to the cause of liberty, specifically women's liberty.

Lose any one of the five-member majority, and replace him/her with a Scalia/Roberts/Alito/Thomas clone, as John McCain has promised to do were he elected, and the right of a woman to choose will vanish. MAKE NO MISTAKE.

The decades-old victory by the feminist movement (to which Hillary Clinton and many of her supporters can proudly lay claim) for women to have the simple power over their own bodies means nothing to the hateful ideology that is prepared to eradicate the centuries-old habeas corpus rights.

Thus, look for Hillary's supporters to move decisively to Obama's camp as the repercussions of a John McCain win become clear and unity beats back the forces of hate and tyranny. Obama should be thinking about Hillary as a Supreme Court appointment for when he wins this fall.

U.S. Needs Erwin Griswold, and Not Paul Clement

Erwin Griswold, U.S. Solicitor General (1967–73)
Dean of Harvard Law School (1946-67)

By Michael Leon
Madison, Wisconsin— Recalling his successful arguing of the landmark Fourth Amendment case in 1972 against the Nixon administration as Nixon literally sought the legal destruction of American Constitutional government through the Supreme Court’s imprimatur, the great civil rights attorney, Arthur Kinoy (1920-2003), writes:

The government’s team had arrived. I immediately looked for their most prominent member, the one wearing the traditional long morning coat that government lawyers invariably wear when arguing before the High Court. … I expected to see Erwin Griswold, the Solicitor General and a former dean of Harvard Law School (pictured above-right). … Instead, I saw an unfamiliar man, tall, dark, and scowling, wearing the morning coat. I turned to (William) Gossett and whispered, ‘It’s not Griswold!’ ‘No,’ answered Gossett, ‘it’s Mardian (Robert Mardian, a Nixon hatchet man at the DoJ Internal Security Division, dedicated to the destruction of anti-war and civil rights citizen groups.) … ‘All (Mardian) needs is the jackboots,’ someone later remarked to Kinoy. … Then something even stranger happened. Griswold walked into the courtroom and sat down in the seat reserved for the Solicitor General, as though to make it clear to the Court that he had not withdrawn because of illness or scheduling conflicts, but for some other reason. He sat there quietly throughout the argument, as if he were constantly saying to the Court through his physical presence, ‘I am not arguing this case. Just remember that.’
- Rights on Trial, the Odyssey of a People’s Lawyer [The case, UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), was unanimously decided, 8 - 0, on June 19, 1972 in favor the White Panthers’ citizens group (among other parties) and dealt a devastating blow to Nixon’s attempt to declare the nullification of the Constitutional guarantees of individual liberty at the sole discretion of the President.]

Under the administration of George W. Bush, there exists few modern-day Erwin Griswolds—though Jack L. Goldsmith, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General of the United States, are worthy candidates.

We do see the same legal and political assault on the Constitution that the president swore an oath to defend, though this administration shies away from the light of day and democracy more intensely than Nixon ever did.

But today, we have as Solicitor General, Paul Clement, a rightwing Cedarburg, Wisconsin native and former Federalist Society member, who has argued numerous cases in favor of a monarchical conception of the executive branch empowered with the secret authority of warrantless surveillance, legal torture and the alleged right to declare any American citizen an “enemy combatant” endowed with no legal rights under the U.S. Constitution or International law, and with no right of habeas corpus.

Paul Clement, respected scholar and soon to be acting Attorney General, sports a record of protecting the Constitutional liberties of citizens that is nothing short of scandalous for an American.

[- From the New York Times, March 29, 2006 on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld -
Justice Souter interrupted. "Isn't there a pretty good argument that suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is just about the most stupendously significant act that the Congress of the United States can take," he asked, "and therefore we ought to be at least a little slow to accept your argument that it can be done from pure inadvertence?"

When Mr. Clement began to answer, Justice Souter persisted: "You are leaving us with the position of the United States that the Congress may validly suspend it inadvertently. Is that really your position?"
The solicitor general replied, "I think at least if you're talking about the extension of the writ to enemy combatants held outside the territory of the United States —— "

"Now wait a minute!" Justice Souter interrupted, waving a finger. "The writ is the writ. There are not two writs of habeas corpus, for some cases and for other cases. The rights that may be asserted, the rights that may be vindicated, will vary with the circumstances, but jurisdiction over habeas corpus is jurisdiction over habeas corpus."]

Those objecting to Bush’s program of accumulating power in the Executive at the expense of the rights of American citizens are not long for service in the administration into which Clements fits snugly.

But we should not be surprised. Under this administration individual liberty has not had as determined an enemy since the darkest days of the disgraced Nixon administration.

What can we do:

- Demand that the permanent appointment to Attorney General be a person of dedication to the rule of law and liberty, and that the Senate not confirm anyone of Clement's anti-liberty views

- Contact the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU and other civil rights organizations and contribute as you can

- Vote against today’s Republican Party that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the libertarian Goldwater era

Today’s Republican party is an authoritarian-minded group of hypocrites, campaigning on bigotry and division, who like Bush seek power for their own ends, with no respect for public service or the liberty of Americans for whom and only with their consent does government derive its just power.

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