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in September
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Featuring Essays by:
Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Michael Neumann, Shahid Alam, Alexander
Cockburn, Uri Avnery, Bill and Kathy Christison and More
Recent
Stories
August
8, 2003
Dave
Lindorff
Snoops Night Out
August
7, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
It the US a "Terrorist Magnet?"
Toni
Solo
Neo-liberal Nicaragua: a New Banana
Republic
Adam Lebowitz
Hiroshima Commemorated: the View from Japan
Hanan
Ashrawi
When the Bully Whines
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Conscience Takes a Holiday
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Lets Slip: Iraq Not Behind 9/11; No Ties to Al-Qaeda
Mike Kimaid
What's the Score?
Elaine
Cassel
The Smell of VICTORY: Ashcroft's Latest Stinkbomb
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
August 6, 2003
Steve
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause: It's Not
Easy Confronting King Coal
David
Krieger
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Robert
Fisk
The Ghosts of Uday and Qusay
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's War on the National Forests
Elaine
Cassel
No Fly Lists
Stan
Goff
Military Equipment and Pneumonia
Hugh Sansom
An Open Letter to Nicholas Kristof on the Nuking of Japan
August
5, 2003
Uri
Avnery
The Prisoner of Ramallah: Arafat at
74
Forrest
Hylton
Terrorism and Political Trials: the
View from Bolivia
Ray
McGovern
"We Cook Estimates to Go"
David
Morse
Poindexter's Gambit
Edward
Said
Orientallism: 25 Years Later
George
W. Bush
My Darn Good Resumé
Hammond
Guthrie
It's Incremental, Watson!
Website
of the Day
National Prayer Day
August 4, 2003
Bruce
K. Gagnon
Another Peace Activist Detained by
Airport Cops: My Story
David
Lindorff
Fear-Mongering About Social Security
Mark
Zepezauer
George F. Will: Descent into Self-Parody
James
Plummer
Tracking You Through the Mail
Mickey
Z.
Marriage Insecurity from Sharon to Bush
Bruce
Jackson
News that Isn't News: How the NYT's
Pimps for the White House
August
2 / 3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
August
1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Stopping Prison Rape
Alex Coolman
Who Moved My Soap: Trivializing
Prison Rape
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Stan Goff
Injury and Decorum: The Missing Wounded in Iraq
Wayne
Madsen
Europe Unplugs from the Matrix
Robert
Fisk
Wolfowitz the Censor
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses Big in Puerto Rico
Website
of the Day
Stop Prisoner Rape
July
31, 2003
Ray
McGovern
The Prostitution of Intelligence
Brian
Cloughley
Wolfowitz's Operative Statement
Sheldon
Hull
The RIAA's Jihad:
The Devil's Music (Industry)
Elaine
Cassel
The Next Time You Crack a Lawyer Joke, Think of These Attorneys
Sheldon
Rampton
and John Stauber
True Lies: Propaganda and Bush's
Wars
Hammond
Guthrie
Speculation Blues
Website
of the Day
Army of One?
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Marjorie
Cohn
Why Iraq and Afghanistan? It's About
the Oil
Elaine
Cassel
How Ashcroft Coerces Guilty Pleas
in Terror Cases
Zvi
Bar'el
The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War
Lisa Walsh
Thomas
Killing Mustafa Hussein: Death of a Child, Birth of a Legend?
Sean
Carter
Pat Robertson's Prayer Jihad: God, Sodomy and the Supremes
ND Jayaprakash
India and Ariel Sharon
Steve
Perry
Bush's Top 40 Lies
Standard
Schaefer
Correction about Bloomberg and Outscourcing
Website
of the Day
Bring Them Home Now!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
August
8, 2003
Dear
God, Deliver Us from Evil
The Reign of Ashcroft
By ELAINE CASSEL
For more than a year now I have been following
John Ashcroft's war on defense attorneys. He fired the first
shot across the bow at Lynne Stewart, the New York City attorney
who was court-appointed to represent Sheikh Abdel Rahman. Two
weeks ago, a federal judge threw out the terrorism counts lodged
against her (for representing her client's interests), and a
hearing on her motion to dismiss the remaining charges comes
up on August 26.
An attorney representing one of the Alexandria
11 defendants told me that the prosecutors are trying to get
him disqualified for conflict of interest involving his client
and another defendant. A claim of conflict belongs to the client,
not the prosecutors. What interest do they have in who defends?
Ah, but the Ashcroft prosecutors do. They see their case is
in trouble and strike out like a snake, rattling at anything
in its path.
Maybe the Lynne Stewart ruling took a
little wind out of ole John's sails. Or maybe he has been out
in the Washington, D.C. August humidity too long. But now he
is after federal judges.
According to a report in The Washington
Post, on July 28, Ashcroft ordered U.S. attorneys across the
country to report cases in which federal judges impose lighter
sentences than called for in sentencing guidelines. Ashcroft
and his top guns at the Department of Injustice will then personally
supervise the appeals of cases in which sentences were not
harsh or mean enough for the born-again Church of God fundamentalist
John Ashcroft.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) accused
Ashcroft of creating a blacklist of federal judges. Where is
Ashcroft going with this beyond more appeals? Impeachment? As
for the appeals themselves, the Senate's approval of Bush's
slate of right-wing judges lacking in an ounce of independence
will pay off first here. Appellate judges review cases to see
is mistakes were made at the trial; sentences are reviewed if
they are beyond what the law demands, not less than the maximum.
But ideological judges who want to do the Bush regime's bidding
may follow Ashcroft in going outside the law and order a new
trial if the sentence stopped short of the maximum. It is not
clear if Ashcroft's plot is possible under the Federal Rules
of Criminal and Appellate Procedure or existing law, but that
detail won't stop Ashcroft from trying to control every federal
courtroom in the U.S. and its territories.
Justice Department attorneys who received
their marching orders say it is their intent to see that the
laws are applied "fairly" across all jurisdictions.
Fairly means harshly, and devoid of discretion, perspective,
or, heaven forbid, mercy (apparently Maximum John does not read
the Four Gospels). To date, Ashcroft has been almost wholly
ineffective in shoving the death penalty down the collective
throats of juries across the country. Does he think federal
judges--at least those not appointed by Bush I, Bush II, and
Reagan--are going to quiver and quake in the face of his bullying?
But as with the Patriot Act, we cannot
place all the blame on Ashcroft. Congress slipped in a provision
in the "Amber alert" legislation on child abductions
that restricted the ability of federal judges to depart from
the sentencing guidelines and made it easier to appeal and overturn
"downward departures" from the guidelines.
Even Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist
objected to the amendment. In a letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy
(D-Vt.), Rehnquist said that the measure "would seriously
impair the ability of courts to impose just and reasonable sentences."
Some federal judges have spoken out forcefully
against what many of them see as a congressional and Justice
Department assault on their independence. U.S. District Judge
John S. Martin Jr. resigned from a federal court in Manhattan
in June and accused Congress of attempting "to intimidate
judges."
"For a judge to be deprived of the
ability to consider all of the factors that go into formulating
a just sentence is completely at odds with the sentencing philosophy
that has been the hallmark of the American system of justice,"
Martin wrote in an op-ed page article in the New York Times.
The Constitution, defense attorneys,
judges, and juries. What is next on Ashcroft's list? He thinks
that God had him lose the Missouri Senate race to a dead man
so that he could be rewrite the Constitution after 9/11. Not
content with his subversion of the Bill of Rights, he now wants
to take away the Constitutional perogatives of federal judges
and gut Article III of the Constitution.
Let us pray for an end to his reign.
Elaine Cassel
practices law in Virginia and the District of Columbia, teachers
law and psychology, and follows the Bush regime's dismantling
of the Constitution at Civil
Liberties Watch. She can be reached at: ecassel1@cox.net
Weekend
Edition Features for August 2/3, 2003
Tamara
R. Piety
Nike's Full Court Press Breaks Down
Francis
Boyle
My Alma Mater, the University of Chicago, is a Moral Cesspool
David
Vest
Sons of Paleface: Pictures from Death's Other Side
Neve Gordon
Nightlife in Jerusalem
Uri
Avnery
Their Master's Voice:
Bush, Blair and Intelligence Snafus
Robert
Fisk
Paternalistic Democracy for Iraq
Jerry
Kroth
Israel, Yellowcake and the Media
Noah Leavitt
What's Driving the Liberian Bloodbath: Is the US Obligated to
Intervene?
Saul
Landau
The Film Industry: Business and Ideology
Ron Jacobs
One Big Prison Yard: the Meaning of George Jackson
Thomas
Croft
In the Deep, Deep Rough: Reflections on Augusta
Amadi Ajamu
Def Sham: Russell Simmons New Black Leader?
Poets'
Basement
Vega, Witherup, Albert and Fleming
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