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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: House Panel Authorizes Subpoena of Cheney’s Chief of Staff (DAVID ADDINGTON) House Panel Authorizes Subpoena of Cheney’s Chief of Staff By Keith Perine, CQ Staff A House Judiciary subcommittee voted Tuesday to authorize a subpoena for Vice President Dick Cheney ’s chief of staff as part of an investigation into the legality of controversial Bush administration counterterrorism policies. The Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties by voice vote authorized the subpoena of David S. Addington, who served as Cheney’s legal counsel before becoming his chief of staff in 2005. Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. , D-Mich., had invited several current and former top administration officials — including Addington and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Yoo, — to testify at a hearing on the administration’s controversial legal opinions on the use of harsh interrogation techniquest on terror suspects. In an April 18 letter to the committee, however, the vice president’s office questioned the committee’s authority to summon Addington to testify. The subcommittee did not authorize a subpoena for Yoo, as originally expected, because he has agreed to appear before the committee in the future. Shin Inouye, a spokesman for Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler , D-N.Y., said that the subcommittee voted to issue the subpoena because it’s their jurisdiction, but the hearing will probably be conducted by the full committee sometime in June. The full Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department a week ago for copies of all its written opinions on the legality of controversial Bush administration counterterrorism policies. Citing “the threat to our constitutional system of government posed by what appears to be a large and expanding body of secret executive branch law,” the committee specifically requested 11 memoranda apparently written in 2001 and 2002. Some memoranda issued since 2001 by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel have been released, and they lay out an expansive view of Bush’s unilateral authority to spy on Americans or arrest and harshly interrogate suspected terrorists. But other memoranda remain secret. The department has rescinded some of the opinions. The American Civil Liberties Union praised the panel’s investigation and its ongoing hearings. “This is truly a defining moment for America,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “It is well past time for Congress and the American people to know if our highest officials authorized torture and whether or not criminal laws were broken. Hopefully some of these lingering questions will be answered. Those whose presence was requested for today’s hearing but refused to show up should be subpoenaed by Congress. The American people have the right to know what happened and who is responsible.” During the Tuesday hearing, the subcommittee heard testimony from a panel of four academics, three of whom were administration critics. “The administration consciously sought legal advice to set aside international constraints on detainee interrogations,” said Philippe Sands, a University of London law professor. Majorie Cohn, a law professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, said “torture does not work,” and added that less coercive interrogation methods produce better results. Trent Franks of Arizona, the top Republican on the subcommittee, said it was “naive” to think that suspected terrorists should be questioned only without using harsh methods. Emily Walker contributed to this story.
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#1. To: aristeides (#0)
Anything that pisses C-heney off is ok by me.
The only reason for torture is to get the answer that the regime wants to get..
And, if it has to torture to get it, that means that the answer the regime wants to get is not true. They had to torture to get the operational details they reported of 9/11. Hmmmm.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
I wonder what the Germans, Romans, et al, chatted about as they saw their countries circling the drain? Are we powerless to affect change?
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