Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
- Attorney Jim Lafferty Commentary: 2021 Cold War
—-
Journalist Put On FBI Terrorist Watch List Starts Class Action Case
Philadelphia-based journalist Dave Lindorff learned in spring 2019 that he was on the FBI’s Terrorist Watch List, used to require special searches of international fliers from and to the US. The list is readily accessible on computer to all domestic law enforcement agencies and most corporate security departments. Lindorff is about to bring a case against the US government over the list on First Amendment grounds.
Attorney Baruch Weiss, a partner at the major DC law firm, Arnold & Porter, is handling the case on a pro bono basis. Weiss was previously a deputy lead counsel to the Homeland Security Department shortly after it was created in the Bush/Cheney administration. He wants to add to the case any other plaintiffs who have First Amendment grounds for challenging their suspected inclusion on the list before filing the case in federal district court in Philadelphia later this spring, so that it will more likely have an impactful decision if the court finds the list to be unconstitutional.
Examples of First Amendment issues would be a journalist who has written stories that challenge one or another US government agency. If that was followed by a sudden inability to obtain a boarding pass online the day before the flight or being called to the gate on a return flight to the US undergoing a special inspection of person, carry-on luggage and electronics by special security personnel as happened twice to Lindorff. A First Amendment issue might involve being active in a human-rights or antiwar or other anti-establishment protest or advocacy organization and finding it suddenly difficult to obtain early boarding passes or being subjected to lengthy special inspections before being allowed to board a plane.
Guest – Dave Lindorff, contributor to The Nation, and writes for Salon, London Review of Books, and Counterpunch. He is founder of ThisCantBeHappening.net. Author of four books, Dave was a 1990s Hong Kong/China correspondent for Business Week.
—
Stevens Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine
The 1861 to 1865 Civil War and the reconstruction period which followed it is widely considered to be the second American revolution. The slave-owning planter class in the south was defeated, at least for a while. Slave labor was abolished, but came back in other forms after reconstruction was crushed by 1877.
The promise of the declaration of independence that all men are equal before the law was fulfilled, at least for a while. Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens was the foremost political leader in the struggle, even more than Abraham Lincoln. Stevens helped to bring about the abolition of slavery and was a leader in the effort during Reconstruct to make the United States a biracial democracy This wise and eloquent revolutionary has been vilified and rendered rendered obscure during most of the years since he died 153 years ago.
The distinguished historian Bruce Levine in his just published biography of Stevens “Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice” has secured a place for him alongside his contemporary John Brown in the pantheon of American revolutionary figures.
Guest – Bruce Levine, emeritus professor of history at the University Illinois and the author of four previous books on the Civil War era.
————————————-
Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Remembering Attorney Ramsey Clark
Our friend and colleague Attorney Ramsey Clark died in his home in Greenwich Village from complications from a fall last Friday, April 9, 2021. He was 93 years old. He came from a prominent New Deal Texas family. His father Tom Clark had been the Attorney General of United States and then served on the Supreme Court. The Clark family and the Lyndon Johnson family were friends and political allies.
Lyndon Johnson appointed Ramsey Clark to be the US Attorney General. He served in that position for 18 months severely disappointing Johnson who remarked that he thought he was appointing Tom Clark’s son. “I was wrong.“ said Johnson. Clark opposed the death penalty and declared a moratorium on it when he was in office. He opposed wire tapping.
He supported the civil rights movement and helped draft the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He was a key person empowering federal desegregation orders. At a cabinet meeting he declared his opposition to the war in Vietnam. That was the last cabinet meeting, he told us, that Johnson ever invited him to.
He also disappointed and baffled many on the left when he took up representation of such figures as Shaikh Abdul Rahman, Milosevich and Saddam Hussein. Clark said they deserved competent counsel.
Guest – Attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, that is partnering with the newly-formed Center for Protest Law and Litigation, to demand a fully public investigation into law enforcement’s handling of the riot on the Capitol Building on that day that shocked much of the nation.
Guest – Attorney Alan Levine, a law partner of Ramsey Clark’s for five years in the firm Clark, Wulf, and Levine. He worked as an attorney with the New York civil Liberties Union and the Puerto Rican Defense Fund.
Guest – Ralph Nader, one of the nation’s most effective and well-known social critics. He has raised public awareness and increased government and corporate accountability. As a young lawyer in 1965 he made headlines with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, leading to congressional hearings and passage of a series of life-saving auto safety laws in 1966. His example has inspired a generation of consumer advocates, citizen activists and public interest attorneys. Full biography.
Past interviews with Attorney Ramsey Clark
Law and Disorder June 24, 2013
Law and Disorder January 21, 2013
———————————————
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Crony Capitalism, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Sensing Injustice: A Lawyer’s Life And The Battle For Change
We are going to spend the entire hour with attorney Michael Tigar to discuss his just published magnificent memoir Sensing Injustice: A Lawyer’s Life And The Battle For Change.
By the time he was 26, Michael Tigar was a legend in legal circles well before he would take on some of the highest profile cases of his generation. In his first US Supreme Court case, at the age of 28, Tigar won a unanimous victory that freed thousands of Vietnam war resistors from prison. Tigar also led the legal team that secured a judgment against the Chilean Pinochet regime for the 1976 murders of dictator Pinochet opponent Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronnie Moffit in a Washington, DC car bombing.
He then worked with the lawyers who prosecuted Pinochet for torture and genocide. A relentless fighter of injustice, Tigar has been counsel for Angela Davis, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H.Rap Brown). Tigar the Chicago Eight, and leaders of the Black Panther Party, to name only a few. His book is about stories, people stories of injustice, struggle, and sometimes vindication as he put it. Michael Tigar is a magnificent storyteller with a dry wit and a prodigious memory. Monthly Review link to Sensing Injustice
Guest – Constitutional attorney Michael Tigar, professor emeritus from The Washington College of Law and has taught at the University of Texas and Duke University. He has practice before the Supreme Court, arguing his first case when he was 24 years old. Tigar has written or edited more than a dozen of important books including “Law and the Rise of Capitalism.“ He has worked for over 50 years with movements for social change as a human rights lawyer, law professor, and writer. Since 1996 he has practiced law with his wife Jane B. Tigar. Michael Tigar’s blog Tigarbytes.
———————————–
Afghanistan War, Civil Liberties, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Iraq War, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Jodie Foster Plays Attorney Nancy Hollander in The Mauritanian
In 2019 Law & Disorder interviewed Nancy Hollander for our Lawyers You’ll Like series. Nancy secured whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s release in 2017 when President Obama commuted her sentence from 35 to 7 years. Nancy was also an attorney in the landmark Holy Land Five Case. In her law practice she often represents individuals and organizations accused of crimes involving national security.
We also spoke with Nancy in 2018 about her client Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose release she obtained after he served 15 years in the American offshore prison camp in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, without ever being charged of a crime. Slahi wrote a memoir about his experience in prison called Guantanamo Diary, where he was tortured in ways personally approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Thanks to Nancy Hollander the book was published in 2015 and became an international bestseller. Fast forward to 2021. A new film, The Mauritanian, features Jodi Foster as Nancy. Foster has already won a Golden Globe for her performance, and the film sheds light on Nancy’s tenacious fight to free her client, the secretive prison camp and the illegal practices therein.
Guest – Attorney Nancy Hollander has been a member of the firm Freedman Boyd Hollander Goldberg Ives & Duncan, P.A. since 1980 and a partner since 1983. Her practice is largely devoted to criminal cases, including those involving national security issues. She has also been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures and administrative hearings, and has argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Hollander also served as a consultant to the defense in a high profile terrorism case in Ireland, has assisted counsel in other international cases and represents two prisoners at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Nancy is co-author of WestGroup’s Everytrial Criminal Defense Resource Book, Wharton’s Criminal Evidence, 15th Edition, and Wharton’s Criminal Procedure, 14th Edition. She has appeared on national television programs as PBS Now, Burden of Proof, the Today Show, Oprah Winfrey, CourtTV, and the MacNeill/Lehrer News Hour.
—-
Stevens Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice by Bruce Levine
The 1861 to 1865 Civil War and the reconstruction period which followed it is widely considered to be the second American revolution. The slave-owning planter class in the south was defeated, at least for a while. Slave labor was abolished, but came back in other forms after reconstruction was crushed by 1877.
The promise of the declaration of independence that all men are equal before the law was fulfilled, at least for a while. Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens was the foremost political leader in the struggle, even more than Abraham Lincoln. Stevens helped to bring about the abolition of slavery and was a leader in the effort during Reconstruct to make the United States a biracial democracy This wise and eloquent revolutionary has been vilified and rendered rendered obscure during most of the years since he died 153 years ago.
The distinguished historian Bruce Levine in his just published biography of Stevens “Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice” has secured a place for him alongside his contemporary John Brown in the pantheon of American revolutionary figures.
Guest – Bruce Levine, emeritus professor of history at the University Illinois and the author of four previous books on the Civil War era.
————————————-
Civil Liberties, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Supreme Court, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
- Commentary On Julian Assange’s Case By Attorney Jim Lafferty
—
Capital Punishment: Mumia Abu-Jamal And Heidi Boghosian
Journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal spent 40 years on death row in Pennsylvania. As listeners will recall, in 2012 his death penalty sentence was overturned by a Federal Court and he entered general population. While on death row he published 13 books and numerous commentaries on issues of social justice and the carceral state. In a special interview, Mumia joins us to reflect on capital punishment and its relationship to our modern society.
—-
CCR: A Rights Based Vision for the First 100 Days
Some political skeptics , distrusting of the incoming Biden administration, are saying that it’s “ out with the old in with the older.“ That is that the old neo-liberal crew from the Obama/Clinton days are back in power and that little will change, nothing fundamental.
They are especially concerned about the impending climate catastrophe, systemic racism, the threat of nuclear war, the shifting of wealth from the bottom to the top, and the never ending forever wars. The Center for Constitution Rights has developed a comprehensive program to challenge this. It is called A Rights Based Vision for the First 100 Days.
Guest – Center for Constitutional Rights Advocacy Director attorney Nadia Ben-Youssef, is a graduate of Princeton University and the Boston College of Law. She has worked with the Adalah Justice Project for Palestinian rights In the Negev in southern Israel.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Surveillance, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself
COVID-19 did not cause the current economic devastation to billions of people around the world. It triggered the crisis. It illuminated the inherent instability in the capitalist system itself. Capitalism exacerbates unemployment, inequality, racism, and patriarchy and threatens the health and safety of workers and our communities.
We are in the worst economic crisis since the great depression of 90 years ago. Half of the American population is poor or near poor. Twenty million people are unemployed. It is estimated that 400,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 by the end of the year. Most of these people will be Black, Latino, the poor and the elderly.
The large corporations have bought out both the Republican and Democratic parties. Neither one of these parties has put forward an effective plan on what to do to get us out of this catastrophic situation.
Guest – Professor Richard Wolff, author of The Sickness is the System: When Capitalism Fails To Save Us From Pandemics or Itself. Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program of International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. His previous books are Understanding Socialism and Understanding Marxism.
—-
Julian Assange Extradition Case Update
The decline of democracy and the rule of law, already advanced under Obama , has accelerated under Trump. By his own admission it is widely known that President Trump will not consent to leaving office if he loses the election. What is not so widely known is the case that he caused to be prosecuted against journalist and whistleblower Julian Assange.
Assange is being railroaded in the Old Bailey courthouse in London in an effort by US government, in collaboration with its British ally, to extradite Assange and send him to the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia to be tried under the 1917 Espionage Act.
Assange told the truth about American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan back in 2010. He is 49 years old and in terrible mental and physical health. If he loses and is sent to the Eastern District of Virginia for trial and successfully prosecuted, which is a given, it will be the death of free journalism and a blow to the first amendment which is a keystone of our democracy because it involves the right to learn.
Assange Defense
@defenseassange – Nathan Fuller twitter
Defend.wikileaks.org
Guest – Attorney Nathan Fuller who has been attending Julian Assange’s extradition hearing in London. He leads the London-based Courage Foundation and the director of the newly formed Committee to Defend Julian Assange and Civil Liberties.
—————————
—————————
