Constitutional lawyer and prolific blogger Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com gives us the scoop on Eric Holder, who just accepted Barack Obama’s invitation to become Attorney General — making him the first African-American AG in the nation’s history.
Some good stuff, especially regarding abuses of the Patriot Act:
When you look at some of the things that have done under the spirit of the [Patriot] Act, where you detain citizens without giving them access to a lawyer, where you listen in on attorney-client conversations without involving a judge, these are the kinds of things that have been done in the name of the Patriot Act by this administration that I think are bad ultimately for law enforcement and will cost us the support of the American people which is a vital tool to be successful in this war on terrorism . . .
I think in a lot of ways, the problem that I had with the enforcement of the act is that this administration said essentially trust us. We’re not going to involve judges, we’re not going to report to Congress on what we’re doing, and I think our history has shown us that we are best when we operate as people governed by the law as opposed to putting our trust in people and that’s the problem I have.
You have to deal with this whole question of secrecy and the way in which the administration has conducted itself. You need to involve judges. If you’re going to look at business records or library records, this should not be something that’s simply done by the executive branch without the involvement of judges.
That’s from 2004. The guy’s been out front about everything from the AG’s job being a check on the President’s power, to condemning the U.S.’ policies of torture, to opposing warrantless wiretapping/spying on citizens.
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This entry was posted on 19 November 2008 at 11:22 am and is filed under Random commentary. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Attorney General, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Glenn Greenwald, Patriot Act, Politics, Warrantless wiretapping
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The new Attorney General, Eric Holder
Constitutional lawyer and prolific blogger Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com gives us the scoop on Eric Holder, who just accepted Barack Obama’s invitation to become Attorney General — making him the first African-American AG in the nation’s history.
Some good stuff, especially regarding abuses of the Patriot Act:
That’s from 2004. The guy’s been out front about everything from the AG’s job being a check on the President’s power, to condemning the U.S.’ policies of torture, to opposing warrantless wiretapping/spying on citizens.
Sign me up.
This entry was posted on 19 November 2008 at 11:22 am and is filed under Random commentary. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Attorney General, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Glenn Greenwald, Patriot Act, Politics, Warrantless wiretapping
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.