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The Spectacle Blog
I feel like I should like Liz Cheney. After all, I’m one of those who still believes that what George W. Bush called a forward strategy of freedom should play a large role in America’s foreign policy, and when she was at the State Department Liz Cheney directed important efforts to promote free enterprise, democracy, and freedom of the press in the Middle East and North Africa — so I was disappointed when she spoke at CPAC and didn’t say a word about promotion of freedom abroad.
I was just as disappointed when her PAC, Keep America Safe, ran this overwrought attack ad targeting Justice Department lawyers, and I wasn’t the only one:
A group that includes leading conservative lawyers and policy experts, former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and several senior officials of the last Bush administration is denouncing as “shameful” Republican attacks on lawyers who came to the Obama Justice Department after representing suspected terrorists.
Senate Republicans have demanded details of the lawyers’ past work and Liz Cheney’s group “Keep America Safe” has questioned their “values.” A drumbeat of Republican criticism forced the Justice Department reluctantly to identify seven of them last week. But the harshness of the criticism — Keep America Safe labeled a group of them the “Al Qaeda Seven” — has provoked a backlash from across the legal establishment.
“We consider these attacks both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications,” wrote the 19 lawyers whose names were attached to the statement as of early Monday.
These aren’t a bunch of squishes; signatories to the statement include some of the most consistent defenders of controversial Bush-era policies, most notably David Rivkin and Lee Casey (Spencer Ackerman elaborates on this, though as usual with Spencer you have to ignore a bit of sneering lefty cant mixed in with the useful information). And they’re right to object to the “Al Qaeda Seven” ad.
Bill Kristol, who sits on the board of Keep America Safe, defends the ad, saying “the main issues in the debate have been whether Congress and the public are simply entitled to know who these lawyers are, and the question of whether former pro bono lawyers for terrorists should be working on detainee policy for the Justice Department.” That’s all well and good — Justice was wrong to withhold the names of the lawyers (which is why they caved on that), and we can certainly debate the views of the people setting detainee policy. But an ad that brands a group of lawyers the “Al Qaeda Seven” and asks “Whose values do they share?” isn’t questioning their views, it’s questioning their loyalty to America. That’s completely unwarranted. Competent and ambitious lawyers should be able to defend deeply unsympathetic clients without fear of attacks like that — as Julian Sanchez explains, our legal system can’t really function properly if they don’t.
It would be nice to have a prominent figure defending the Bush Administration’s foreign policy legacy with intellectual rigor and honesty. It seems like Liz Cheney, who is clearly considering a run for office and is likely to be on the national stage for years to come, could be that person if she wanted to be. I wish that she would.
View all comments (39) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by John Tabin
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/03/09/whats-the-matter-with-liz
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Ron Evans| 3.9.10 @ 12:58AM
Very well said Mr. Tabin. I was very disappointed with the ad run by Cheney and Kristol.
Brad Long| 3.9.10 @ 1:01AM
Glad to see conservatives criticizing Cheney on this. I like her quite a bit, but she has really demagogued the hell out of this one.
PCC| 3.9.10 @ 4:18AM
Well, yes, 'The Al Qaeda 7' is ill-advised and over the top, but I don't think it rises to the level of 'shameful'.
Most of the bleating is just lawyers protecting lawyers.
Also, it achieved the legitimate objective of persuading the DOJ to publish the names of the lawyers involved, which it otherwise probably would not have done.
Pingback| 3.9.10 @ 5:57AM
The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : What's The Matter With Liz? American Me links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
SayHuh| 3.9.10 @ 6:38AM
You've got to be kidding? Right? There is a legitimate problem here. Conflicts of interest. Thanks for Joining the ACLU. The one organization that has taken away rights from millions of Americans and only recently outed CIA officers and military.
I just lost my respect for you.
SayHuh| 3.9.10 @ 6:44AM
Maybe none of you have noticed, but our nation is at war. No, not abroad, but right here at home. Soros and crew, have managed to wreck our markets, investments and banking. You should be going after these criminals. This man owns a bank now in America. How? He is indicted criminal in France. He was just fined by Hungary for insider trading again! This scumbag made off with a cool Billion dollars during the crisis. Don't tell me he did not have insider information. What is worse, Americans, we Americans are paying taxes for $12 billion free money to Goldman Sachs! It went thru AIG! Why the hell do I have to pay for these scum bagsssss!!!!
You want to gripe about Liz? You fricken coward. Go take on Soros and Goldman Sachs, demand investigations to these crooks and demand American get every penny back from Goldman. No one was fired! People got millions in bonuses!
Our nation is being ripped to shreds by these scum and you and Spectator bitch about some low life lawyers that defend murderous thugs of 3,000 Americans???
Get you heads out from between your legs!
Dave| 3.9.10 @ 7:27AM
If these lawyers had been assigned cases and then did their best to defend their clients, this would not be an issue. The fact is that many of them sought out the role of terrorist defender and did the work pro bono. Why would a lawyer do this? They had to have a strong belief of some sort, either in the rule of law or in the actions of those terrorists. I, personally, am not entirely convinced it's the former. Cheney et al. were asking why people who sought out the defense of terrorists were now in sensitive positions regarding the formation of policy. It's a conflict of interest on its face. Not only is there nothing wrong with asking questions about the lawyers' and administration's motivations, conservatives are derelict for not doing so more forcefully.
W.R.| 3.9.10 @ 7:41AM
More to the point - as defense lawyers, they were entitled to know about the evidence against their clients but not the details on how it was obtained: intelligence gathering methods, sources, ect. Now as DOJ officials.....
Brian| 3.9.10 @ 7:31AM
Obama and his band of leftists smeared and conducted witch hunt investigations of lawyers who developed the detention policies, their media hacks put their faces on the front pages, mocked them with lies and called them "torturers" and may yet face show trials. I say we need a full investigation into the Al Qaeda 7. Appoint a special prosecutor and let the ppl decide!
Bunkerville | 3.9.10 @ 8:30AM
We need to know who is making decisions in our DOJ. The new pick for Head of the Dept of Legal Counsel Dawn Johnsen, is troublesome. Its the radicalization that needs the Sunshine. Its a drip, drip, drip that left unnoticed, will take us somewhere we would prefer not to go. Here is some of Johnsen's positions
“legal abortion remains safer than childhood” Grassley quotes her “And that bans on abortion might undermine the 13th Amendment, which bans slavery. And that, ‘forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continual physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest,’ end of quote.” Gee Whiz…
“As head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Johnsen would be the senior official responsible for making legal judgments in the war on terror,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said. Her sweeping condemnations of counterterrorism policies have been factually and legally wrong — and clearly tinted through the lens of her leftist agenda,” Sessions added.
http://bunkerville.wordpress.c.....uessed-it/
lucy| 3.9.10 @ 8:33AM
"Competent and ambitious lawyers should be able to defend deeply unsympathetic clients without fear of attacks like that..."
I don't think attacks like this will deter lawyers. What this episode showed was more of the character of the people like Liz Cheney, who are as removed from certain fundamental American values as it is possible to be.
tonypal| 3.9.10 @ 10:29AM
Lucy, this is very simple. As an attorney, I can tell you that there are a variety of reasons to take on a client, the main one being the desire to make money. However, in the case of the terrorists these justice dept. lawyers represented, the motivation had to be something else because the defendants did not have deep pockets.
So what may have been their motivation? Could it be that these lawyers are committed leftists who see the US as the threat, who accept the notion that we (along with Israel, of course) cause people to become terrorists through our foreign policy decisions?
If the answer to the above question is yes, and I'm quite certain it is, then what we have is a bunch of leftist ideologues in charge of prosecuting the very same types of people they previously defended on ideological grounds. Do you have a problem with that? If you don't, then perhaps you're the one who is "as removed from certain fundamental American values as it is possible to be."
Lucy| 3.9.10 @ 11:33AM
I'm glad you're not my attorney, conspiracy theory, to the best of my understanding, doesn't fly well in court.
"So what may have been their motivation?" Maybe you missed Walter Dellinger's op-ed last week, explaining how one of his lawyers, aman called Karl Thompson, at O'Melveny Myers got involved... because the military lawyers defending a Gitmo detainee needed advice on Supreme Court procedural matters and O'Melveny felt it right to help them out. So there's one leftist ideologue, whose involvement stemmed from doing what his bosses asked him to do in response to a request from the military.
To me, it is in fact pretty simple - there's no evidence of "leftist ideologues" (whatever you mean by that) doing anything at odds with traditions of American justice. What is at odds with traditions of American justice is calling defense attorneys traitors. That's what Liz Cheney did, and that's what Ken Starr and other conservative lawyers have called her on.
tonypal| 3.9.10 @ 12:14PM
I'm glad you're not my client, because I would need to spend far too much time explaining everything I say multiple times. There is no conspiracy theory in what I said, just you interpreting it that way in order to make your point.
Since I have a few minutes, I'll try to explain so even you can grasp the concept. Lawyers often accept clients because they have certain beliefs, such as when ACLU attorneys defend child pornographers not based on the attorney's support for child porn, but because they (mistakenly) believe it's a first amendment issue. Are you with me so far?
Here, it's pretty clear that what motivated the attorneys to take these clients in the first place was the view that these terrorists were simply doing what comes naturally when the big bad US projects it's foreign policy.
I hope you're still with me. Now these same lawyers are in charge of prosecuting these same types of people? Is it really so hard to understand that just maybe they might have some sort of a conflict. Conflicts arise every day for attorneys, requiring us to do the ethical thing and refuse the client. For a prosecutor or judge, the term is recusal.
I know I threw a lot of big words at you. If you don't get it by now, then there's no hope. Incidentally, Walter Dellinger is no conservative. He has spent the last few years whining about George Bush and conservatives in general. As for Ken Starr, if you're a liberal as I suspect, I find it interesting that the previously evil, sex-obsessed Ken Starr is your go-to-guy on this matter.
lucy| 3.9.10 @ 12:52PM
I understand what you are saying but you've got no evidence of anything, I'm not buying any of it. And I certainly don't accept that a lawyer who defended one Gitmo detainee isn't able to prosecute another in the future. That's a lauaghably ridiculous premise.
Missy| 3.9.10 @ 2:06PM
Hypocrisy is an ugly thing to behold, Lucy.
I loved Liz Cheney's ad; it's about time we played some hard ball--shine the light on those leftist DOJ freaks! I want to know who they are are and what they believe.
Transparency is a good thing, right, Lucy? After all, Obama repeated it ad nauseam on the campaign trail. lol
Derek Leaberry| 3.9.10 @ 8:44AM
Liz Cheney is no social conservative and deserves no support from social conservatives. Her election to any office would be a victory for the homsexual lobby as Miss Cheney supports the bizarre antics of her wayward homosexual sister. Furthermore, Liz Cheney exposes her feminist point-of-view by refusing her husband's surname, a slap in the face of centuries of Western Civilization.
tonypal| 3.9.10 @ 10:33AM
So what exactly is Liz Cheney supposed to do, disavow her own sister. In the world I come from, which is apparently the same world the Cheney's inhabit, I stand by my family. I don't disown them publicly, which is apparently what you would suggest Ms. Cheney do to her sister. That would make her unworthy of support from social conservatives such as myself.
Quartermaster| 3.9.10 @ 5:39PM
You tell the public your sister lives in a way you do not approve of, and that her philosophy is inimical to the social well being of the country. It isn't necessary you tell the world you hate your sister.
As for refusing the name change, she has pulled a feminista. That's enough for any conservative to be very wary of her.
Missy| 3.10.10 @ 10:51PM
Lighten up, knuckle-draggers: We're conservative--we're not your slaves!
BUG OFF!
Missy| 3.9.10 @ 2:14PM
If Liz Cheney's husband is okay with her keeping her own name why do you care? Don't you have more important things to be concerned about?
Cheney is a strong and capable spokeswoman for the conservative point of view; it's counterproductive to nip at her ankles.
Joan| 3.9.10 @ 10:56AM
I say go Liz Cheney...we've seen what Eric Holder has done so far - mirandizing terrorists and such...now we're suppose to trust his judgement on hiring the very attorneys that defended these thugs? Maybe in your world - not mine. Boot 'em! And Boot Eric Holder too!
Kyle Smith | 3.9.10 @ 11:01AM
How about this? They are lawyers first, humans second, Americans third. Which American lawyer today would have been Hitler's defense lawyer? There would be many in line to do the honor.
Tahoe| 3.9.10 @ 11:15AM
As a former DOJ attorney, I have watched the Department's increased politicization with disgust. DOJ holds a special responsibility to uphold and enforce the Constitution and laws of the United States. Politics have no place in securing this responsibility. As a recent WaPo editorial pointed out, we wouldn't want to have mob lawyers at DOJ handling organized crime cases. So why use Al Qaeda mob lawyers to set policy or run terrorism cases? The vitriol level is so high in response against Cheney et al, that it is clear a blow has been struck against those partisans in sheep's clothing within DOJ.
Why don't we get past these defense attorney "smoke and mirrors" tactics, and get back to the real issue here? Please, AG Holder, comply with clear disclosure requirements and reveal the details as to how terrorism case policies have been set, and disclose who has participated in the process. It is unworthy of the USG to simply point fingers at its critics in order to obfuscate the truth.
Think First| 3.9.10 @ 11:30AM
I can't believe this article even got written. I was listening to Mark Levin and did some of my own home work on these guys. Isn't it funny Michelle Malkin has been talking about how secretive the DOJ has been about these guys as well. Why aren't you trashing her as well?
These people ACTIVELY sought to defend these guys and THAT'S what's driving all this. None of the people like Liz or Michelle is concerned with people needing representation getting it. This all about DOJ leaders who actively support, defend and volunteer to protect men and women sworn to tear this country down.
This is about as misinformed and misguided an article as I've seen on AS. If you haven't done your due diligence before reporting, then have the respect of your readers to hold your tongue.
Is it too much to ask you to apologize for not investigating this better?
Tish | 3.9.10 @ 11:54AM
Congressional requests for the information were relegated to File 13 by Holder & Co. Liz Cheney forced DoJ's hand by serving up a heaping plate of transparency claims to the Obama Administration. She didn't call the 7 traitors, but since we now know who they are, a little research tells us that Holder has brought in like-minded lawyers to help him in not prosecuting terrorists. Gee, what could possibly be wrong with that?
Nolann Ryann| 3.9.10 @ 11:54AM
Strange that these same principled lawyers were quiet as a church mouse when the left was doing everything they could to destroy John Yoo, Bybee et al. Tabin has penned one of the most ridiculous spleen venting brow massaging pieces of garbage this blog has seen in quite some time.
These attorneys weren't on public defender status; they sought the enemies of our country out and did everything in their power to trash this country and the administration. So now we're supposed to be upset that a group is demanding that the DOJ provide the names of these same attorneys and what role they have in crafting detainee policy? Typical lawyers circling the wagons in defense of other lawyers. Yet again where were these same arbiters of discourse and decorum when attorneys who actually were doing everything in their power to defend and safeguard the country were getting tarred and feathered for their efforts? Answer; nowhere to be found. Yet they'll man the ramparts to defend those who sought to undermine this nation in a time of war. Nice job Tabin.
Pingback| 3.9.10 @ 12:05PM
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paterfamilias abatchnik| 3.9.10 @ 12:09PM
Mr. Tabin,
I have never noticed your posts starting such a row. Do posts often do this?
Ken (Old Texican)| 3.9.10 @ 1:01PM
Does anyone here not know...that Holder is a scumbag communist, (pardon the shorthand)?
Does anyone here with room temperature IQ not realize that he pushed for the hires of the 7 scumbag terrorist volunteers?
Please quit the PC whining. I am personally gratified to know that someone outed these jerks....
If for no other reason than when the terrorists strike again....the arrow points straight at Holder and Obama.
We really are at war, people. Choose sides and eat the consequences.
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