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"Q. How does your background as a constitutional law and civil rights litigator inform the way you approach research and writing as a journalist? One of the primary skills one learns as a litigator is to make one's case by beginning with first premises, establishing their truth with evidence, and then compelling the conclusions you want others to reach. That's how I try to write now. I think that if you want to make an argument, there's an obligation to lay out the premises for it, provide evidence for it, allow readers to assess the documentation for themselves. That belief probably comes from the way judges and juries need to be persuaded that an argument is true. Beyond that, I chose to litigate constitutional and civil rights cases, and to represent plaintiffs, because I wanted to use my abilities to empower those who are vulnerable and powerless and who are being mistreated by the powerful. That, to me, is a primary purpose of the Constitution itself, and, when done correctly, a core purpose of journalism. That's what I try to do now as well in the work I do. I'd much rather be at war with corrupt elites than serving their interests."

While the Cheneys, father and daughter, continue to hammer away at the accusation that the Obama administration has a "mindset" problem because it (sometimes) chooses to deal with terrorists through the criminal justice system, another bullet-hole has been leveled at their argument by, of all nations, Germany. This isn't France that chose to try terrorist suspects in a civilian criminal court. This is big bad Germany. And these were not just any terrorists. The judge in the case declared, they had dreamed of "mounting a second September 11 2001" by killing US civilians and soldiers by bombing targets like Ramstein Air Base. They were accused of operating as a German cell of the radical al-Qaeda-linked group, the Islamic Jihad Union.

Leader Pelosi speaking on the House floor on Saturday, July 30th.

By Ralph Nader & Carl J. Mayer New York Times, April 9, 1988 Our constitutional rights were intended for real persons, not artificial creations. The Framers knew about corporations but chose not to mention these contrived entities in the Constitution. For them, the document shielded living beings from arbitrary government and endowed them with the right to speak, assemble, and petition. Today, however, corporations enjoy virtually the same umbrella of constitutional protections as individuals do. They have become in effect artificial persons with infinitely greater power than humans. This constitutional equivalence must end. Consider a few noxious developments during the last 10 years. A group of large Boston companies invoked the First Amendment in order to spend lavishly and thus successfully defeat a referendum that would have permitted the legislature to enact a progressive income tax that had no direct effect on the property and business of these companies. An Idaho electrical and plumbing corporation cited the Fourth Amendment and deterred a health and safety investigation. A textile supply company used Fifth Amendment protections and barred retrial in a criminal anti-trust case in Texas. The idea that the Constitution should apply to corporations as it applies to humans had its dubious origins in 1886. The Supreme Court said it did "not wish to hear argument" on whether corporations were "persons" protected by the 14th Amendment, a civil rights amendment designed to safeguard newly emancipated blacks from unfair government treatment. It simply decreed that corporations were persons. Now that is judicial activism. A string of later dissents, by Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, demonstrated that neither the history nor the language of the 14th Amendment was meant to protect corporations. But it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle and the corporate evolution into personhood was under way. It was not until the 1970's that corporations

Yesterday -- more than a full year after it first released selected portions of purported chat logs between Bradley Manning and government informant Adrian Lamo (representing roughly 25% of the logs) -- Wired finally published the full logs (with a few redactions).  From the start, Wired had the full chat logs and was under no constraints from its source (Lamo) about what it could publish; it was free to publish all of it but chose on its own to withhold most of what it received. 

"The U.S. should take note. As it prepares to engage with Africa more intensely than at any time since the Cold War, in part by the Pentagon's establishment of a new Africa Command headquarters to coordinate military and security interests, the U.S. will be competing on an increasingly flat information playing field."

This older article highlights the immorality of much that is called U.S. foreign policy and journalism. The lesson learned here is not what it should be, that people on the grassroots are fighting against authoritarian violent governments funded by the U.S. Rather it is a bland, neoimperialist comment about what the U.S. propaganda machine has to deal with in future interventions.