IT HARDLY MATTERS Back to Main Index Browse the Archives	Sunday, September 24, 2006 ( 09:03 PM ) REALLY? Are you serious??? Bush seeks immunity for violating War Crimes Act September 23, 2006 BY ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN Thirty-two years ago, President Gerald Ford created a political firestorm by pardoning former President Richard Nixon of all crimes he may have committed in Watergate -- and lost his election as a result. Now, President Bush, to avoid a similar public outcry, is quietly trying to pardon himself of any crimes connected with the torture and mistreatment of U.S. detainees. The ''pardon'' is buried in Bush's proposed legislation to create a new kind of military tribunal for cases involving top al-Qaida operatives. The ''pardon'' provision has nothing to do with the tribunals. Instead, it guts the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal law that makes it a crime, in some cases punishable by death, to mistreat detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and makes the new, weaker terms of the War Crimes Act retroactive to 9/11. Press accounts of the provision have described it as providing immunity for CIA interrogators. But its terms cover the president and other top officials because the act applies to any U.S. national. Avoiding prosecution under the War Crimes Act has been an obsession of this administration since shortly after 9/11. In a January 2002 memorandum to the president, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pointed out the problem of prosecution for detainee mistreatment under the War Crimes Act. He notes that given the vague language of the statute, no one could predict what future ''prosecutors and independent counsels'' might do if they decided to bring charges under the act. As an author of the 1978 special prosecutor statute, I know that independent counsels (who used to be called ''special prosecutors'' prior to the statute's reauthorization in 1994) aren't for low-level government officials such as CIA interrogators, but for the president and his Cabinet. It is clear that Gonzales was concerned about top administration officials. Gonzales also understood that the specter of prosecution could hang over top administration officials involved in detainee mistreatment throughout their lives. Because there is no statute of limitations in cases where death resulted from the mistreatment, prosecutors far into the future, not appointed by Bush or beholden to him, would be making the decisions whether to prosecute. To ''reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act,'' Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn't apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002. When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again. What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted. Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along. Wednesday, September 13, 2006 ( 01:31 PM ) Well, the word on the street is that El Nino is back. After this exceptionally dry and frickin hot Texas summer, I am glad for a wet winter but not that glad. Tuesday, September 12, 2006 ( 02:04 PM ) So over the weekend was the big OSU vs. Texas game. Thousands upon thousands of Ohio fans came to Austin especially for the game. And Austin, being the lovey-dovey southern hospitality town that it is, welcomed all these Midwestern types with open arms. Like with signs in front of strip clubs proclaiming "Welcome Buckeyes" and people being all nice to out-of-towners wearing OSU red. Well, I for one was not all that welcoming of the Buckeyes (forget the fact that we lost the game). On Friday night we were at the Broken Spoke and a lady came in wearing a red OSU shirt that had an inverted UT Longhorn logo on the back. My immediate reaction was to the inverted logo and how disrespectful such a display was. I wanted to smash her over the head with a chair. She was like 45 years old or something, but it didn't matter to me. Friday, September 8, 2006 ( 02:47 PM ) Okay, if there's one phrase that should most definitely be destroyed immediately (not to mention cursed for ever being created), it's "get [my/your/our]        on." Somebody just walked past my office and said to his companion, "I'm going to get my dinner on at The County Line." Okay, so maybe there was a time when the phrase was popular enough to be used frequently (for me it has always been annoying), but folks need to realize that the time has LONG since passed. Monday, September 4, 2006 ( 10:13 AM ) Well, we all knew this day would come. Steve Iwrin got gotten by a stingray. Suprising that it happened? I guess. Shocking? No. Like I've always said, Swim with the stingrays, you're gonna get stung. "Crikey!" Steve Irwin, 1962-2006 Saturday, September 2, 2006 ( 12:17 AM ) Yes, being a crotchety old a-hole who likes to complain and complain and complain about TV isn't good for one's health. And don't even get me started on people who whine about how you can't turn on the TV without seeing something offensive on screen every 2 minutes. I can watch a whole day's worth of TV and not see anything offensive. What, they've never heard of HGTV? Head of TV watchdog group steps down LOS ANGELES - L. Brent Bozell, one of America's best-known crusaders against broadcast indecency, has stepped down as president of the Parents Television Council, the organization said Friday. Bozell will be replaced as president Jan. 1 by executive director Tim Winter. Bozell, who founded the organization in 1995, will continue to serve on the board. The PTC was largely responsible for the government's crackdown on broadcast indecency, leading a lobbying campaign that persuaded Congress to increase fines against stations that air indecent material tenfold. Bozell said running the PTC combined with other commitments has "simply become too much for me, and with a large family, it's just not healthy for me. More importantly, however, it is not healthy for the PTC." Winter is a former executive with NBC.