All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said the Obama administration's decision to try professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a federal court is a political move to satisfy "left-wing critics" of military tribunals.

Attorney General Eric Holder has drawn heavy fire from Republicans and some Democrats since announcing last week that Mohammed and four alleged henchmen would be prosecuted in a civilian trial instead of a military tribunal. A CBS News poll released earlier this week shows Americans wary of the idea as well, with 54 percent opposed compared to 40 percent in favor.

Giuliani, who was mayor at the time of the World Trade Center attacks, said the move was part of a political agenda "because it makes no sense," during an appearance on CBS' "The Early Show" Thursday.

"The reality is that they could be tried in a military tribunal. There is no reason to try them in a civilian court. Others are going to be tried in the military tribunal. And the reality is we've never done this before. And this is something that was pushed very, very hard by the left wing for President Obama to do and he's been criticized for delaying in doing it."

Read full post…

Democrats in Congress today praised the Obama administration for taking steps to revamp procedures for interrogating suspected terrorists and called the Justice Department's investigation into past interrogation methods the first step towards justice. Meanwhile, Republicans called the creation of the new interrogation unit and the investigation politicized power grabs and distractions from critical anti-terrorism efforts.

The Obama administration is assigning a veteran U.S. prosecutor to begin a criminal probe of CIA questioning of terror suspects during the Bush administration, it was announced Monday. The White House also confirmed it is creating a new terror suspects interrogation unit that it will directly supervise. The developments came on the same day a 2004 report from the CIA inspector general was released revealing interrogation techniques like threatening the suspects' families.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the inspector general's report provides "conclusive evidence" that interrogators overstepped the legal boundaries in place and that their techniques of "torturing detainees in U.S. custody did not make us safer."

"The conduct that is documented in this report illustrates the perils of the dark road of excusing torture down which the Bush administration took this nation," he said. "I also believe it underscores why we need to move forward with a Commission of Inquiry, a nonpartisan review of exactly what happened in these areas, so that we can find out what happened and why. Who justified these policies? What was the role of the Bush White House? How can we make sure it never happens again? Information coming out in dribs and drabs will never paint the full picture."

Though he would ultimately like to see a nonpartisan commission formed to examine the interrogations, Leahy said in a separate statement that Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to investigate the issue should bring a measure of accountability to the American people.

"I am grateful that the Justice Department is finally being led by an independent Attorney General who is willing to begin investigating this dark chapter in our country's history," he said. "I had no doubt that he would put the interests of the law ahead of politics, and he has demonstrated that."

Read full post…

Nearly two years ago, the Bush administration sided with the major record labels in their civil lawsuit against an alleged, and briefly famous, Kazaa user named Jammie Thomas. Now the Obama administration is as well.

In a legal brief filed on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice said the whopping $1.92 million fine that the Recording Industry Association of America slapped on Thomas was perfectly constitutional.

Federal prosecutors argue the relevant law is "carefully crafted" and consistent with "due process" and part of a necessary "regime to protect intellectual property. Under current law, copyright holders can sue for up to $150,000 per work (such as an MP3 file, DVD, or book).

Their brief adds: "Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where many violators believe that they will go unnoticed." It does not take a position on issues other than the constitutional ones.

Read full post…

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales deflected questions Tuesday regarding whether he knew anything about former Vice President Dick Cheney's alleged orders to the CIA to keep its counterterrorism program secret from Congress.

"It's very difficult to talk about classified activities in an unclassified setting," Gonzales told CBS' "The Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith.

Read full post…

Small town factory Oak Hall Caps and Gowns are anxiously awaiting Sonia Sotomayor’s likely appointment to the Supreme Court - not for political reasons, but so they have a chance to make for her what some call the "Cadillac" of robes.

The Salem, VA factory is where many justices get their gowns. Oak Hall hand-makes about 2,000 of the special robes each year and its employees are hoping Sotomayor’s ascension means another order.

"We are hoping to again see the initials SMS," Oak Hall Vice President Donna Bridges tells “Washington Unplugged,” referring to long-time customer Sotomayor.

CBS News' Fernando Suarez goes behind the judge's robes here:

Read full post…

A federal judge in San Francisco has tossed out a slew of lawsuits filed against AT&T and other telecommunications companies alleged to have illegally opened their networks to the National Security Agency.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker on Wednesday ruled that, thanks to a 2008 federal law retroactively immunizing those companies, approximately 46 lawsuits brought by civil liberties groups and class action lawyers will be dismissed. (See our related story.)

Congress has created a "'focused immunity' for private entities who assisted the government with activities that allegedly violated plaintiffs’ constitutional rights," Walker wrote in a 46-page opinion. That has not, he said, "affected plaintiffs' underlying constitutional rights."

Wednesday's ruling is a bitter defeat to groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, which are coordinating the lawsuits over warrantless wiretapping. They had hoped to convince the judge that the law improperly infringed upon the separation of powers described in the U.S. Constitution and handed too much power to the executive branch.

Read full post…

Seeking to calm fears that al Qaeda terrorists could be set free on U.S. soil, Attorney General Eric Holder pledged today that prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay prison facility would not be released in the United States.

"We would not bring them into this country and release them," Holder said.

The Obama administration promises to close the detainment center in just eight months. Holder did not rule out some of detainees being brought to the United States for trial.

The possibility of terrorists coming to America has been met with "Not in My Backyard" objections from members of both major political parties.

Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) asked CBS News this question: "Do you know of any community in the United States of America that would welcome terrorists?"

Read full post…

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the key Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, says that he could support a gay Supreme Court justice, The Hill reports.

“I’m not inclined to think that’s an automatic disqualification,” Session said of the prospect of a gay justice. Gay rights groups have called on President Obama to install an openly gay justice.

“I may disagree with some legal opinion on those issues, but I think fundamentally it will be up to the president to submit somebody who would unite the country and would be a clear statement of a mainstream judge who commits himself to the law,” he added.

Read full post…

As you likely know by now, Supreme Court Justice David Souter reportedly plans to retire at the end of the court's term this June.

Our Chief Legal Analyst and Legal Editor Andrew Cohen weighs in within two columns on CBSNews.com today -- one that looks at Souter's record and the reasons he is leaving the bench, and another that floats the names of possible replacements.

Souter Will Leave A City He Never Liked

The soon-to-be-retired David Hackett Souter is proof that you can always take the boy out of the country but you can’t always take the country out of the boy. ...

Instead, like fellow Republican appointees Kennedy and O’Connor (who also have been pilloried and offended by the right), he straddled the Court’s middle rung of ideology. Liberals loved that because Justice Souter gave them victories they had no right to expect when he was appointed. Conservatives hated it because they couldn’t count on his vote.

Guessing Game: Who Will Replace Souter?

It’s been 15 years since a Democratic president got to appoint a justice. Back then, in 1994, President Bill Clinton selected a moderate liberal from the lower federal courts, Stephen Breyer, to replace the moderate conservative (and Republican appointee) Harry A Blackmun. Now, in the coming weeks, President Obama will have to decide who he wants to replace David H. Souter, another practical, left-moderate jurist, who evidently has plans to ride off in the New England sunset.

Fifteen years of frustrated Democratic nominees has caused quite a back-up of candidates. But the Obama Administration already has offered some serious clues about the sort of person they’d like to try to put onto the court. Six weeks ago, when asked about a potential Supreme Court nomination, a senior Administration official told reporters that the White House is looking for people with experience in law and in life, people with character and commitments to a community, people who can make hard decisions but still have empathy for the litigants before them.

If these job qualifications are accurate - if they aren’t just spin - they suggest strongly that the President will look beyond the lower federal courts for his first selection.

You can read more of Cohen's posts in Hotsheet here.

Read full post…

By a single vote, the United States Supreme Court Tuesday threw its weight behind the embattled Federal Communications Commission on the topic of the regulation (read: the banning) of “fleeting” expletives on our airwaves. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for a fractured majority, declared that the FCC was within its statutory and regulatory authority when it sought to chastise Fox for two long-ago incidents in which “F-bomb” was used on live television at a time when children were watching.

But the Court refused to address, much less resolve, whether the regulations (and their statutory basis) violate the broadcaster’s first amendment “free speech” rights. The lower federal appeals court had not addressed or resolved that constitutional issue so the Justices were not bound to do so, either, and it is a virtual mantra at the Court that the Justices will rarely say more than they have to in order to resolve a dispute. Here, the majority determined that they could dispatch Fox’s argument without ever reaching its constitutional merits.

Read full post…