Ouch!
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/liz_cheneys_shameless_smear_20100308/Liz Cheney’s Shameless Smear
Posted on Mar 8, 2010
By Eugene Robinson
The word McCarthyism is overused, but in this case it’s mild. Liz Cheney, the former vice president’s ambitious daughter, has in her hand a list of nine Justice Department lawyers whose “values” she has the gall to question.
She ought to spend the time examining her own principles, if she can find them.snip//
But maligning is apparently the whole point of the exercise.
The smear campaign by Cheney, et al., has nothing to do with keeping America safe. It can only be an attempt to inflict political damage on the Obama administration by portraying the Justice Department as somehow “soft” on terrorism. Even by Washington’s low standards, this is unbelievably dishonest and dishonorable.
“Whose values do they share?” a video on the group’s website ominously asks. The answer is obvious: the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.The most prominent of the nine Justice officials, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, represented Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan, in a case that went to the Supreme Court. In a 5-3 decision, the court sided with Hamdan and ruled that the Bush administration’s military tribunals were unconstitutional. Are Cheney and her pals angry that Katyal was right? Or do they question the “values” and patriotism of the five justices who delivered the majority vote?
The letter from the conservative lawyers points out that “in terrorism detentions and trials alike, defense lawyers are playing, and will continue to play, a key role.” It notes that whether terrorism suspects are tried in civilian or military courts, they will have access to counsel—and that Guantánamo inmates, even if they do not face formal charges, have a right to habeas corpus review of their detention. It is the federal courts—not defense lawyers—that have made all of this crystal clear.
If Cheney and her group object, they should prepare a blanket denunciation of the federal judiciary. Or maybe what they really don’t like is that pesky old Constitution, with all its checks, balances and guarantees of due process. How inconvenient to live in a country that respects the rule of law.But there I go again, taking the whole thing seriously. This is really part of a “death by 1,000 cuts” strategy to wound President Barack Obama politically. The charge of softness on terrorism—or terrorist suspects—is absurd; Obama has brought far more resources and focus to the war against al-Qaida in Afghanistan than the Bush-Cheney administration cared to summon.
Since Obama’s opponents can’t attack him on substance, they resort to atmospherics. They distort. They insinuate. They sully. They blow smoke.
This time, obviously, they went too far. But the next Big Lie is probably already in the works. Scorched-earth groups like Keep America Safe may just be pretending not to understand our most firmly established and cherished legal principles, but there is one thing they genuinely don’t grasp: the concept of shame.
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