U.S. Attorney General gets a lesson on the Constitution

Kim Pearson — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 21:32:22 -0600

This exchange actually happened as US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was being questioned Thursday by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Gonzales: [T]here is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away. But itâ€™s never been the case, and Iâ€™m not a Supreme â€”

SPECTER: Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The constitution says you canâ€™t take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesnâ€™t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?

GONZALES: I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesnâ€™t say, â€œEvery individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.â€ It doesnâ€™t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by â€”

SPECTER: You may be treading on your interdiction and violating common sense, Mr. Attorney General.

transcript and video from Think Progess

Habeas Corpus is a fancy Latin term that means that a prisoner has the right to make her captors show that he or she is lawfully imprisoned, and not being mistreated. Here is what the Constitution says about it:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Of course, administration critics have been worried about Gonzales' reading of the Constitution for a while now, especially since last October's passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which gave the executive branch broad powers to suspend the writ for suspected terrorists. At the time of the Act's passage, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), called the bill "flagrantly unconstitutional," arguing:

"Passing laws that remove the few checks against mistreatment of prisoners will not help us win the battle for the hearts and minds of the generation of young people around the world being recruited by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. Authorizing indefinite detention of anybody the Government designates -, without any proceeding and without any recourse -- is what our worst critics claim the United States would do, not what American values, traditions and our rule of law would have us do.

â€œThis is not just a bad bill, this is a dangerous bill.â€

Leahy now chairs the Judiciary Committee, and added his own tough criticism to Specter's aggressive questions. Leahy pressed Gonzales about the extraordinary rendition of Maher Arar, a Canadian accused of terrorism whom the US had shunted off to a secret prison in Syria under its extraordinary rendition program. there, he was tortured, according to reports. In September, 2006, Arar was exonerated by a Canadian Commission of Inquiry.

Leahy angrily told Gonzales that the administration knew "damn well" that Arar would be tortured if he was sent to Syria.

Meanwhile, Carolyn Elefant at Legal Blog Watch reports on one attorney who would love to draw that kind of attention to his client's case. William Teesdale has made a Youtube video on behalf of his client, Adel Hamad, a Sudanese hospital worker who has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2003. Teesdale interviewed members of Hamad's family, co-workers and others and came away convinced of his innocence.

While Teesdale's video has certainly raised awareness about Hamad's case, Carolyn warns, "Whether Teesdale's video is successful in gaining his client's release remains to be seen."

To Christy at Firedoglake, this aggressiveness, coupled with promised investigations by Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-Calif)Government Oversight Committee, are a sure sign that,finally, the grownups are back in town."

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U.S. Attorney General gets a lesson on the Constitution