even stopped clocks are right twice a day (as I’m fond of saying), and Paul is right about this. David Barron, a Harvard law professor, husband of MA-Gov candidate Juliette Kayyem, very smart guy by all accounts, and (most relevantly) former acting head of the Obama Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), has been nominated to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston. As head of OLC, which is essentially the legal policy arm of the Justice Department, Barron was responsible for some very controversial stuff, most notably the lengthy memo supplying the legal justification for the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged al-Qaeda operative who died in an American drone strike in Yemen and who also happened to be a U.S. citizen (he was born in New Mexico). Another U.S. citizen (Samir Khan, who apparently was not specifically targeted) died in the same strike.
The administration has been ordered by a federal appeals court in an unrelated case to produce a redacted version of the al-Awlaki memo, but it has not yet done so. Now, Senator Paul has said that he will block Barron’s nomination unless the memo is made public, and other Senators – including some Democrats like Mark Udall (D-CO) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) – are also saying that they won’t support him unless the administration agrees to produce the memo.
Today, the administration announced that it would allow Senators to read the memo in a classified setting. Udall, at least, says that’s not enough, and that he won’t back Barron unless the memo is made public.
A comment on the NY Times website rhetorically asks about Barron, “is he the John Yoo of drone strikes?” And I think that is a fair question to ask. The Globe quotes a law professor from Richmond as saying that Barron “should not be punished for representing his client.” But I think that misunderstands the situation. OLC lawyers do not represent their client; they advise their client. And when the client wants to do something illegal, a good legal advisor says “no,” and explains why not. Barron did not do that in the al-Awlaki case; instead, he concluded that what the client wanted to do was legal (at least in some circumstances), and offered a lengthy explanation of why that was so. Seems to me the Senate, and the public, are entitled to see that explanation before Barron becomes a life-tenured federal judge.
Bernstein on how this might affect the governor’s race, and it seems like a good strategy for red state Dems to tack to the President’s left while looking bipartisan and also doing the right thing. It is unfortunate this nomination was sponsored by our Senators. I think the John Yoo comparison is more than appropriate.
This can and should be an issue in the midterms and it’s an area where Democrats can put some distance between them and the President, work with Paul in a bipartisan fashion, and also do the right thing by the Constitution and human rights.
I’m not sure either Udall or Wyden qualifies as a “red state Dem.” Mark Begich (D-AK) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA) do, but AFAIK their expressed reservations about Barron are less about the al-Awlaki memo and more about the fact that, on most constitutional issues, Barron is a real progressive.
Begich seems to be making it more about the drone memo, which fits Alaska, I am sure Landrieu just wants some bipartisan credit with Paul mixed with ‘taking on the President’s liberal justice’-you are right on that one. Udall is in a potentially tough general in CO. Wyden is just being Wyden.
My overall point is, I think the drone memo could be sufficiently disqualifying on it’s own, and if the civil libertarian wing of the party wants to fight back this might be the place to go.
Given that her main credential is “Homeland” security, this issue has potentially more traction than it otherwise would.
Either actually filibuster by standing on your feet for hours on end or persuade your colleagues to vote against him or vote to refer the nomination back to committee.
I would love to see all of the home state veto rule go away along with secret holds.
Unfortunately, Senators are addicted to the power they hold and are unlikely to give this up.
But I do think it’s appropriate to do a true filibuster against this nominee, and for what it’s worth Rand Paul has done those against drones in the past.
I’ve linked to this on the other thread, but this quote from Conor Friesdorf is telling.
This should be a fairly cut and dry vote of conscience.
and also the willingness of BMG liberals like david not to dismiss him, however much we disagree with Paul on other issues. No matter how progressive Barron is, his work to justify assassinating Americans without trial means he should not be rewarded.
jconway, did Warren & Markey really sponsor Barron? That’s a shame, and surprising, in light of Warren speaking out recently to question OBama’s drone policy.
I’m curious where Kayyem stands re: her husband’s work on behalf of assassinations. It’s not an issue likely to come up in a governor’s race, but if she supports the policy, it would be a sign that she has an authoritarian view of what state power should be.
Given her book, I wouldn’t be surprised if she agreed with her husband: http://www.lawcourts.org/LPBR/reviews/heymann-kayyem0306.htm.
I know Warren was on record supporting Barron. I think it was in the Masslive piece on this issue. I was rather disappointed in her for that.
being the home state Senator, and of the president’s party, it would be a BIG deal not to back Barron’s nomination. Warren has so far picked her battles very carefully, and I think this is a wise choice on her part. We’ll see as this progresses whether she goes to the mat for him, or lays back.
She also likely knows him to some degree and may know him very well from the law school. Not supporting him would be huge – probably enough to cause a swell to kill the nomination. I agree, it will be interesting to see how strong her support is.
Kayyem should not, in isolation, be viewed through the prism of her husband’s views. The problem for Kayyem lies with the fact that her own career is also peppered with things that make progressives very uncomfortable. Her publicly stated views on highly coercive interrogation techniques or “torture lite” are to the right of John McCain and her views on state sponsored assassination are exactly in line with her husband’s. Listen to Kayyem in this interview from 2006, the opinions that she expresses on state sponsored assassination provide a clear framework for the drone memo that her husband would write four years later. Here’s a link to the interview, the torture lite & assassination segment starts at 19:40.
Wow! Pro-torture and pro-asassination. Does draw the line at assassinations within the US. Should that be comforting?
Does anyone consider the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” concept when constructing these strategies? Would Kayyem consider it acceptable for those who believed Americans to be war criminals to assassinate Americans or to torture Americans if it was believed that it would save lives of their people?
Finally, I firmly believe that the torturer is severely damaged in this process.
Just very ugly and very disturbing!
In terms of the race for governor, I’m much more concerned with the memo the candidate herself wrote advocating a legal framework for torture.
n/t
It states no torture unless you get the okay of the President and they are believed to have information that will save American lives.
In the post above by lisagee, you can here Kayyem in her own words promoting waterboarding and assassinations.
… I don’t like the position, but she calls for existing laws and treaties to be followed.
With the caveat that I don’t know much about this, it sounds like Barron is a political person who was given a political task at Justice — much like John Woo (though, really, not as bad as Woo. We don’t call it War on Terror for nothing — we’re at war, and he wrote on use of the weapon).
Some of my best friends are political people who do political things. It’s fine. But they pretty much know they’re never going to sit on a federal bench, and if Barron is essentially a political operative for Obama, then I don’t see why he should sit on a federal bench.
Ms. Kayyem advocates “torture light”, “possibly” including waterboarding, in the interview posted by lisagee earlier. Note that the link in that comment is broken, use this link to the Juliette Kayyem interview instead.
The key segment starts at 19:40.
Those words, in my view, disqualify her as a candidate for governor. So much for her “liberal” positions — her moral compass is simply broken.
A person who promotes assassination and torture has no moral compass.
If someone believes it is justified to torture or assassinate a human being when necessary, then how big a deal can smaller moral choices like cheating, lying, misleading and stealing – when it really important.
It was cowritten with a Harvard professor. So was it in her official Homeland Security capacity, or as an academic policy recommendation?
I suppose it’s a small difference, but if she wrote it officially and was seeking to justify the existing actions, that’s one thing. It still strikes me as a critique, though a not-far-enough critique.
It was written during George W. Bush’s presidency – she was an Obama appointee.
Kayyem’s project was sponsored in part by the Bush Admin’s DHS and its recommendations were the basis for legislation that proposed legal authorization for Highly Coercive Interrogation techniques that you or I (or John McCain) would consider torture. She wasn’t an irrelevant academic working in a ivory tower, she was in a position to influence US law on torture & assasination during the Bush Administration.
Kayyem was a Director of the Harvard Project on Long-Term Legal Strategy for Combating Terrorism, which was sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. The project produced a report recommending legislation that would allow the President to authorize use of torture & targeted assassination.
Kayyem also worked with Congresswoman Jane Harman on drafting legislation that would authorize highly coercive interrogation techniques. Harman discussed the proposal in a speech at Georgetown University on February 7, 2005 and was severely criticized by human rights activists. Fortunately, the Harvard plan was then quietly dropped.
Paul, stopped clock, is correct on this issue (although, separately, the current filibuster procedures in the Senate are outrageous and unconstitutional, in my opinion). Obama should release all of the memos, in full, immediately, so that their reasoning can be judged, or stop relying on them for anything.