In his post on Senator Rand Paul’s proposal regarding citizens and the NDAA, Bobby highlights a recurring and important question: why is it so hard for ostensibly civil libertarian legislators explicitly to oppose the domestic detention of U.S. citizens? To … Read more »
Ben is a far better wordsmith than I–”a little cowardly” communicates a lot more in a lot less than my post from Tuesday afternoon about why the House Armed Services Committee’s version of the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act does … Read more »
Over at DefCon Hill, Jeremy Herb shares a letter written by former Attorneys General Edwin Meese III and Michael Mukasey and former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to House Armed Services Committee Buck McKeon criticizing the various amendments that … Read more »
I have thus far stayed fairly mum on the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act, if for no other reason than the 150 exams (now 80) that I have to grade. That said, there’s an alarming meme emerging from the House … Read more »
A quick note updating readers on the progress of the draft NDAA FY’13: Chairman McKeon’s bill passed HASC last night in the wee hours. Next stop: the floor, where we are likely to see, among other things, debate over an … Read more »
[UPDATE 5/10/12: Whoops. Careful readers will note that the new bill omits the congressional-notification language from last year's bill...at least in the text of the statute, though not in the explanatory statement. I explain here.]
Another item of interest … Read more »
HASC Chairman Buck McKeon today released a draft NDAA for FY ’13, which will head to the full committee for markup on the 9th. The text of the bill as it currently stands is posted here, McKeon’s announcement and … Read more »
House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon released the following statement on the detainee recidivism report:
House Armed Services Committee Releases
Report on Risk Levels in the Release of Detainees from Guantanamo BayWASHINGTON – Today the House Armed Services Committee
Back in March 2011, House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon and Ranking Minority Member Adam Smith instructed the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations to examine transfers and releases of detainees from Guantanamo. The Subcommittee has now released the results of … Read more »
Senator Mark Udall of Colorado is pushing an amendment to the NDAA to strip the bill of its detainee-affairs provisions and require further study of the relevant issues from both the executive branch and relevant congressional committees. Here is the … Read more »
I have one thought to add to Bobby’s observations yesterday about the legal implications of finishing off the Al Qaeda core in Pakistan. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon has taken a beating for his supposedly radical idea of … Read more »
Here is the latest salvo in the debate relating to the NDAA provisions relating to detainees: Last week Chairman McKeon sent this 7-page letter to the White House responding to the administration’s earlier Statement of Administration Policy (“SAP”) criticizing the … Read more »
On Tuesday morning, the House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing titled “Ten Years After the 2001 AUMF: Current Status of Legal Authorities, Detention, and Prosecution in the War on Terror.” I’m not sure if it will … Read more »
Earlier today, Raffaela noted a letter, sent by the Chairs of various House Committees to the President, regarding the latter’s approach to the Warsame case. Unsurprisingly, the letter critiqued the Administration on various grounds. Fair enough. But it’s worth … Read more »
Several House committee chairs have sent this letter regarding the Warsame case to President Obama. Their primary concerns are summed up in the first full paragraph of the second page:
We are concerned that the lack of a comprehensive military
I promised yesterday that I would collect and post my thoughts in response to Spencer Ackerman’s and Marcy Wheeler’s comments on drones and debates. Rather than try to take on the many big themes they raise in a single marathon … Read more »
Bobby has already noted that the administration’s handling of the Warsame case would not have been possible had either the suspect set foot in Guantanamo Bay under current law or if pending congressional efforts to mandate military detention or military … Read more »
Politico’s Josh Gerstein is reporting:
A move by House Republicans to reauthorize the war on terror is unwise because it could foster perceptions that the U.S. is in an endless war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and similar groups, the
The administration just issued a Statement of Administration Policy on a DHS appropriations bill (H.R. 2017), which contains a spending restriction similar to one of the Guantanamo transfer restrictions that provoked the administration’s recent veto threat with respect to the … Read more »
Here are five quick thoughts about the legislative tussling over the AUMF and detention policy following yesterday’s House vote to pass the NDAA and its provisions on the subject.
First, if it was not clear before, it it is certainly … Read more »
I have received two interesting responses to my post from last night suggesting tweaks to the AUMF reauthorization language. The first comes from a reader who prefers not to be named, who writes:
Isn’t one problem with McKeon’s language that … Read more »
Ever since my exchange with Daphne Eviatar and Bobby’s post last night, I have been wondering if there’s an easy tweak to Rep. Buck McKeon’s AUMF reaffirmation language. Specifically, could Rep. McKeon make his bill more clearly an affirmation … Read more »
Further to this post on the President’s letter to Congress (and its significance in light of the War Powers Resolution, or “WPR”), here are two recent and quite post-worthy developments regarding military action in Libya. First up is a letter … Read more »
I confess that I’m a bit bewildered by the aggressiveness of the Statement of Administration Policy on the NDAA–about which Bobby just posted. As Bobby notes, the administration seems to be threatening a veto not only over the transfer … Read more »
Very interesting. The six-page Statement of Administration Policyrelating to HR 1540, the proposed National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2012, is here. There are many objections, requests, and veto threats here, most of which concern matters beyond the scope … Read more »
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey has penned this letter to House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon on the latter’s proposed AUMF rewrite. Mukasey describes the legislation as “timely and constructive” and says it would “not confer new powers, but rather … Read more »
No sooner had I finished my last post than I came across this elegant little argument from Adam Serwer:
I think Wittes is right that the original AUMF contained no . . . temporal or geographic constraints. What the AUMF
I have a fair bit to say in response to Daphne Eviatar’s comments from earlier today concerning my post about yesterday’s New York Times editorial. Let me start with a brief comment about Daphne’s complaint about the derisive tone … Read more »
Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First sent in the following in response to my post from yesterday contrasting the New York Times editorial and the Washington Post editorial on Buck McKeon’s AUMF proposal. I will respond to Eviatar’s comments this … Read more »
Anyone who wants to understand in a nutshell the difference between the New York Times editorial board and the Washington Post editorial board on counter-terrorism issues–and, actually, on a broader array of issues too–need look no further than two papers’ … Read more »
A reader writes in to point out that, in my earlier post, I have given away the store on behalf of the administration–and, what’s worse, on matters on which I wholeheartedly agree with the administration. Concerning Section 1039, which … Read more »
I have now had a chance to read through House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon’s new detention and AUMF language, released yesterday as part of the Chairman’s mark of the National Defense Authorization bill. The language is available on pages … Read more »
The House Armed Services Committee has formally assigned a subcommittee to investigate recidivism and treatment issues related to transfers from Guantanamo. In this letter to Reps. Rob Whitman and Jim Cooper–the chairman and ranking member respectively of the Subcommittee on … Read more »
This is the final installment in my series of posts on the post-Executive Order spree of legislation emerging from Capitol Hill. It concerns the interrogation bill introduced by Sen. Saxby Chambliss as part of the Senate package of bills–the … Read more »
I have now had the chance to go over a transcript of Thursday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing on detention policy, at which Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III both testified. Video of … Read more »
Adam Serwer has a very thoughtful piece on yesterday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing, which I could not attend. Like me, Adam has come to the conclusion that there is quite a bit of common ground between the Obama administration … Read more »
I promised Thursday night to write up comments on the new legislation that has emerged in the Senate. Let me start with the proposal by Senator John McCain on detention rules. This bill, introduced by Sens. McCain, Lindsey Graham, … Read more »
House Armed Services Chairman Buck McKeon lost no time in introducing legislation in response to the President’s Executive Order yesterday. Here is a quick and dirty analysis.
A word of disclosure is in order: I was asked for last week, … Read more »
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon announced today that he is introducing legislation “to address the Administration’s Executive Order and America’s terrorist prosecution and detention policies.” The text of the legislation does not appear to be available yet, but … Read more »
In a column today in the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen suggests that it’s time for Obama to revitalize Guantanamo:
In fact, Obama administration is quietly beginning to ramp up operations at Guantanamo. While White House officials continue to assert that
Chairman Mike Rogers included in his remarks from yesterday’s House Intelligence Committee meeting some thoughts about detention authorities. In light of House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon’s comments from a few weeks ago, Chairman Rogers’s remarks suggest that some … Read more »
The New York Times’ Charlie Savage notes an interesting letter sent to President Obama by the new House Armed Services Committee Chairman, Buck McKeon, concerning plans for an executive order establishing a detention review system:
“As you know, any issue
According to CNN, the new chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon, suggests not closing Guantanamo but expanding it:
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said he would like to see more detainees brought to
For the past several months, the Obama administration has been in a weird limbo about Guantanamo. On the one hand, it has barely lifted a finger to effectuate its declared policy of closing the facility–afraid of the politics of the … Read more »
Responding to my earlier post on Buck McKeon’s detention bill, Adam Serwer says the following, on which I cannot improve:
I still maintain that there’s less difference between Republican and administration priorities than there appears to be, and
In his speech yesterday, incoming House Armed Services chairman Buck McKeon promised that his committee would work in the coming Congress on a “legal framework” for detention. Here’s hoping he is more serious about it this coming year than … Read more »
In posting earlier this evening this speech by Republican Rep. Buck McKeon, the incoming chair of the House Armed Services Committee, I promised thoughts on its virtues and vices. The short version is that its vices include its laughably unfair … Read more »
Republican Rep. Buck McKeon, who will chair the House Armed Services Committee in the new Congress gave a speech today at the Foreign Policy Initiative that touched on, among other things, detainee policy. According to the Weekly Standard, he … Read more »
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Carol Rosenberg wrote about yesterday’s arguments in the 9/11 hearings on defense counsel’s request for access to the Red Cross’s reports of its interviews with the five accused. That’s in the Miami Herald.
Yesterday’s House intelligence committee hearing with top intelligence agency and DOJ officials drew a big crowd and much news: Wired explains the DOJ’s efforts to conceal the NSA’s role… Read more »
