ACS National Convention

June 14 - 16, 2012

Washington, DC

Register Now

Login:

Sen. John McCain

October 28, 2011
This Week on JudicialNominations.org
With the Senate convening only for pro forma sessions this week, neither the full Senate nor the Senate Judiciary Committee officially met to discuss judicial nominations.

However, this did not stop Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) from revealing this week that he has privately warned his Republican colleagues not to block President Obama’s nominees, for fear that Democrats will reciprocate during a Republican presidency, Roll Call reports. “[T]he president deserves to have his nominee unless there is a compelling reason not to,” McCain said.

This Monday, the Senate will vote on the president’s nomination of Stephen A. Higginson to be a U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fifth Circuit. Higginson was nominated in May and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted him out in July unopposed by a voice vote. The seat for which he has been nominated has been vacant since September of last year.

More
Tags:
Federal judicial selection, Judicial Nominations, Debo Adegbile, Sen. John McCain
May 7, 2010
Critics of Miranda Persist
Although Faisal Shahzad was detained just over two days after he allegedly attempted a car-bombing in Times Square, criticisms of the investigation persist.

Emily Bazelon summarizes critics' protests:

Miranda worked! Law enforcement officials can invoke a public safety exception and delay reading a suspect his rights to get information that would save lives. In Shahzad's case, the FBI invoked the public safety exception. The agency called in its crack interrogation team, asked Shahzad questions with no Miranda warning, and reaped what the FBI says was "valuable intelligence and evidence." Then Shahzad was read his rights. And lo and behold, he waived them and kept talking.

But none of this has stopped Sens. John McCain, who once sponsored laws to prevent torture, and Christopher Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, from railing against Miranda. "We've got to be far less interested in protecting the privacy rights of these terrorists than in collecting information that may lead us to details of broader schemes to carry out attacks in the United States," Bond said. "When we detain terrorism suspects, our top priority should be finding out what intelligence they have that could prevent future attacks and save American lives," McCain said. "Our priority should not be telling them they have a right to remain silent."
More
Tags:
Separation of Powers and Federalism, Faisal Shahzad, Miranda v. Arizona, Sen. Christopher Bond, Sen. Joe Lieberman, Sen. John McCain
May 5, 2010
Debate Over Miranda Rights and Terrorism Suspect
After being tracked by the number of a disposable cell phone, federal authorities arrested Faisal Shahzad n connection with a failed Times Square car-bombing. The arrest of Shahzad, an American citizen born in Pakistan, prompted calls by some that Shahzad not be read his Miranda rights.

Sen. John McCain, a former presidential candidate and the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, responded to a question about Mirandizing Shahzad, saying, "Obviously that would be a serious mistake until all the information is gathered."

On the other side of Capitol Hill, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King, responded to a similar question, saying, "Did they Mirandize him? I know he's an American citizen but still."

Reporting for The American Prospect, Adam Serwer writes:

More
Tags:
Other courts, Criminal Justice, Separation of Powers and Federalism, Adam Serwer, Miranda v. Arizona, Rep. Peter King, Sen. John McCain
November 19, 2009
Torture and Accountability
BookTalk

The Torture Memos

Rationalizing the Unthinkable

By:
David Cole

By David Cole, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

What should a lawyer do when asked if it's legal to slam suspects into walls, strip them naked, deprive them of sleep for eleven days straight, force them into cramped stress positions and small dark boxes for hours on end, and waterboard them until they fear they are drowning? The answer should be obvious. Such conduct is flatly forbidden - by US and international law. It is cruel. It is inhumane. It is degrading. And it is torture.

When lawyers in the Bush administration's Justice Department were asked that question, however, they said yes. And they continued to say yes, in secret, even as the law developed in public to confirm the absolute illegality of such conduct. Instead of requiring the CIA to conform its conduct to the dictates of law, the lawyers became accomplices to torture, twisting the law to facilitate abuse.

How did they do so? For years, we could only speculate - all but two of the memos on the issue were secret, including all the memos that discussed the CIA's tactics in any way whatsoever. Thanks to a lawsuit by the ACLU and a more forthcoming approach by the Obama administration, we can now see just how lawyers in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel rationalized the unthinkable. The documents I have reproduced in The Torture Memos are the "smoking gun" in the United States' descent into torture. They allow readers to see, first-hand, how law -- and lawyers -- failed.

More
Tags:
Executive power, Separation of powers, Criminal Justice, Separation of Powers and Federalism, BookTalk, David Cole, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, OLC, Rep. John Conyers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Sen. John McCain, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Torture, Torture Memos

Site designed by Free Range Studios
Site developed by Jackson River

1333 H St, NW, 11th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

T. (202) 393-6181
F. (202) 393-6189
info@ACSLaw.org