Details continue to emerge of a far more expansive Domestic Spying program than previously thought. The Washington Post reports that the NSA is part of a larger effort, with the Terrorist Surveillance Program just being one component within a single executive order in 2001. The disclosure comes as an attempt to defend the Attorney General from charges that he committed perjury by saying there was no dissent on these programs when there were numerous meetings to that effect that the Attorney General was present for. The White House’ position seems to be that not all of their activities were controversial and therefore Alberto Gonzales statements were not a conscious lie but perhaps a confusion about which programs the Congress was referring to.

But here’s a question: If Congress did not know about these other programs, why would the Attorney Generals assume they were asking him questions abou a classified program nobody else but he knows about? It seems reasonable they were referring to the publically debated topic of the TSP, or domestic wiretapping.

A confusing and at times rambling editorial in the LA Times has asked that other scholars such as Ward Churchill be removed from Acadamia, without any real substance to such ideas other than the fact that Churchill was an idiot:

Ethnic studies departments, such as Churchill’s, may be the worst offenders. Created in the wake of the ethnic pride movement in the early 1970s, many simply never had the same kind of academic oversight as more established and prestigious fields. Those professors generally toiled with little funding in isolated intellectual ghettos. Their scholarship wasn’t tested in the high-stakes, high-profile competition that hones other academics and other fields. They earned their “psychic income” — a phrase coined by former Gov. Jerry Brown — trying to turn minority undergraduates into activists. (Meanwhile, the quality work on ethnicity was being done in more traditional disciplines.)

Drawing from a quote by Vice President Cheney who pledged to “work the Dark Side” and “Spend Time in the Shadows” to defeat terrorism, LA Times Opinion writer Rosa Brooks writes:

this administration has openly embraced tactics that no previous administration would have formally condoned. In prior wars, for instance, we granted the protections of the Geneva Convention to our enemies as a matter of policy, even when those enemies — like the Viet Cong — lacked any legal claim to the convention’s protections. Yes, some U.S. soldiers abused Viet Cong prisoners anyway — but when they did so, they violated the clear written laws and policies of the United States.

Contrast that with the Bush administration, which refused to recognize any Geneva Convention rights for the “unlawful enemy combatants” captured in the war on terror until finally ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.

Within months of Cheney’s “dark side” comments, Guantanamo filled up with hooded, shackled prisoners kept in open-air cages. The Justice Department developed legal defenses of torture, we opened secret prisons in former Soviet bloc countries and the president authorized secret “enhanced” interrogation methods for “high-value” detainees.

And despite the best efforts of human rights groups, the courts and a growing number of congressional critics from both parties, Cheney’s still getting his way. On July 20, President Bush issued an executive order “interpreting” Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, as applied to secret CIA detention facilities. On its face, the order bans torture — but as an editorial in this paper noted Thursday, it does so using language so vague it appears designed to create loopholes for the CIA.

Further complicated things for Gonzales, FBI Director Robert Mueller contradicted the sworn testimony of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the Terrorist Surveillance Program meetings that occured before the dramatic hospital bed intervention at John Ashcrofts hospital bed.

In sworn testimony, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested that the US domestic wiretapping program may be more extensive than previously revealed and that sister programs that are currently not public may be even more invasive.

FOX Political correspondant Dick Morris told viewers that Hillary Clinton won’t withdraw from Iraq. His reason? “[Hillary] will not withdraw from Iraq. As a woman, she would not want that record.”

Hans von Spakovsky, who did little to boost civil rights and actually tried to undermine some African American’s getting to the polls in his job as leader of the Bush Civil Rights division of the DOJ, is now being nominated for the FEC. Former DOJ officials wrote:

The matter which best demonstrates Mr. von Spakovsky’s inappropriate behavior was his supervision of the review of a Georgia voter ID law in the summer of 2005. It demonstrates the unprecedented intrusion of partisan political factors into decision-making, the cavalier treatment of established Section 5 precedent of the Voting Section, and the unwarranted and vindictive retaliation against Voting Section personnel who disagreed with him on this matter. […]

Henry King Jr, a Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Nazi War tribunal, has said the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, violates the Geneva Convention of 1949 and basic human rights. King told reporters,

“I think Robert Jackson, who’s the architect of Nuremberg, would turn over in his grave if he knew what was going on at Guantanamo….The concept of a fair trial is part of our tradition, our heritage. That’s what made Nuremberg so immortal — fairness, a presumption of innocence, adequate defense counsel, opportunities to see the documents that they’re being tried with.”

From MSNBC:

The Pentagon has decided to ask U.S. military judges to reconsider their decision to dismiss charges against two terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, a spokesman said on Friday.

On Monday, the judges said they lacked jurisdiction to try the suspects, in the latest blow to the Bush administration’s plans to prosecute inmates at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba.

The Judge’s rulings have thrown the entire system into doubt, questioning the legality of the Bush administration’s detainee program. Asking the judge to reconsider is the latest attempt to maintain an unconstitutional system in place a little while longer.

Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general, told Congress that former Attorney General Ashcroft’s hospital-bed objections to a survaillance program were not about domestic spying, suggesting there may be a larger program at issue:

REP. WATT: I’m not asking you to make anything public. I’m asking you, does that mean that the former attorney general had some reservations about — legal reservations about some aspects of the program, Mr. Bradbury?

MR. BRADBURY: Well, all I’ll say is what the attorney general has said, which is that disagreements arose, disagreements were addressed and resolved; however, those disagreements did not — were not about the particular activities that the president has publicly described, that we have termed the Terrorist Surveillance Program