Ex-veep Dick Cheney has claimed that there are two classified documents showing that the enhanced interrogation techniques (a.k.a. torture) used on US-held detainees were effective and helped his administration prevent terrorist attacks. Senator Carl Levin, the Democratic chair of the Senate armed services committee, this past week said these documents do not support Cheney's argument. On Hardball, conservative commentator Terry Jeffrey and I try to sort it out. Guess whose side Jeffrey was on. Guest host David Shuster was on fire, going after Jeffrey on the use of torture. But we did find consensus on a critical point: President Obama should declassify those two documents--and other material--so that the public can determine if Cheney is telling the truth or not. You can follow my postings and media appearances via Twitter by clicking here.

• Print
• Email
• Tweet

In its comprehensive review (PDF) of cybersecurity released Friday, the White House calls for the president to appoint of a cybersecurity czar whose main duty would be "to coordinate the Nation’s cybersecurity-related policies and activities." The report also calls for the appointment of a privacy and civil liberties official to act as a check on the bureaucracy's power to access sensitive online data.

That recommendation seems to indicate the White House is not interested in having the authority to access any relevant data without regard to privacy laws, or the power to shut down the internet in a cyber emergency—broad powers outlined in The Cybersecurity Act of 2009, released last month and sponsored by senators Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

Some civil libertarians had expressed concern that the cybersecurity czar—a position also proposed in the Rockefeller-Snowe legislation—would report to the National Security Agency. But Friday's proposal from the White House calls for that official to work dually under the National Security Council and the National Economic Council, Executive Branch offices under whose umbrella transparency is much easier to achieve than at the NSA.

"It's clear that the White House review team was committed to building privacy into these cybersecurity policy recommendations from the beginning of the process," says Leslie Harris, head of the Center for Democracy and Technology.

The Senate commerce committee, which has been holding the Rockefeller-Snowe bill in anticipation of Friday's White House report, seems to agree with the privacy guidelines. In a statement, Rockefeller and Snow said the president's cybersecurity advisor must be required "to put civil liberties protections front and center. Our aim is to improve the nation’s security—and by this we mean, the security of American lives, property, and civil liberties."

• Print
• Email
• Tweet

Liz Cheney has already gotten some flak from this blog for claiming on live television that calling waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" torture is "frankly libelous." Now Mother Jones' own legal adviser, James Chadwick, has decided to drop some knowledge. Here's what he says:

Liz Cheney's been reading too much George Orwell and not enough first amendment. You can't libel the government, and statements of opinion can't be libelous. I think Liz Cheney would be particularly interested in defending the idea that what constitutes torture is a matter of opinion because if not, her father might be in a lot of trouble. She's not talking about specific allegations about specific people. She's talking about people saying what the US government did... was torture.

One of the reasons the founding fathers established the first amendment was to do away with the idea of seditious libel - libeling the king. You cannot be sued for saying bad things about the government, period.

If you do talk about specific individuals sanctioning torture, then all those individuals are unquestionably public figures, which requires the highest standard of proof that there is in civil law. "Clear and convincing evidence of actual knowledge of falsity, a reckless disregard of the truth." I don't think anyone can say it's actionable to call waterboarding torture.

Bottom line: Liz Cheney doesn't know what the heck she's talking about.

• Print
• Email
• Tweet

Elections (and baseball) stat guru Nate Silver kicked off a wide-ranging blogosphere discussion yesterday when he asked whether Republicans can sacrifice the Hispanic vote (presumably by stepping up anti-immigrant, anti-NAFTA rhetoric and bashing Sonia Sotomayor) and still win elections. He said "si pueden":

If you could gain ground in the Midwest or the South by pursing an anti-immigrant, anti-NAFTA, "America First" sort of platform, you really wouldn't be putting all that much at risk by losing further ground among Latinos. Yes, you could make life (much) harder for yourself if you screwed up Florida or put Arizona into play in the process, but it's not a bad strategy, all things considered.

About half the Hispanics in the United States reside in California or Texas, and another 20 percent are in New York, New Jersey or Illinois, none of which look to be competitive in 2012. (Yes, the Republicans could lose Texas, but probably only in a landslide). There just aren't that many Hispanic voters near the electoral tipping point.

On Friday, statistician Andrew Gelman advanced the discussion by analyzing the Latino vote's impact on President Barack Obama's election win. He says "the removal of the Hispanic vote wouldn't have changed the election outcome in any state." Check out the proof.

• Print
• Email
• Tweet