Cheney: WMD Attack Likely

Speaking from an apparent disclosed location, former Vice President Cheney said on February 3rd that the risk of terrorists attempting a large-scale WMD attack on American soil in the coming years is high, and that Obama administration legal policies may increase the likelihood that the attempt may be successful.

...Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects. And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said...

Citing intelligence reports, Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo during the Bush administration — “that’s about 11 or 12 percent” — have “gone back into the business of being terrorists.”

The 200 or so inmates still there, he claimed, are “the hard core” whose “recidivism rate would be much higher.” (Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have strongly disputed the recidivism figures, asserting that the Pentagon data have inconsistencies and omissions.) Cheney called Guantanamo a “first-class program,” and “a necessary facility” that is operated legally and with better food and treatment than the jails in inmates' native countries.

But he said he worried that “instead of sitting down and carefully evaluating the policies,” Obama officials are unwisely following “campaign rhetoric” and preparing to release terrorism suspects or afford them legal protections granted to more conventional defendants in crime cases.

Update: According to the Long War Journal, Saudi Arabia's new list of 85 most-wanted terrorists includes 11 former Gitmo detainees who went through Saudi Arabia's rehabilitation program.

Border Kidnapping

The stepfather of a Texas woman who went to Mexico for a concert in 2004 and never came back gives this interview to an emotional Glenn Beck, formerly of CNN and now of FNC:

Iraq: Female Sucide Bombers

A horrific story from Iraq.

Holder In; Two Others Out

Despite being the point man for the Clinton administration's controversial pardons (including the 16 FALN terrorists), the Senate confirmed Eric Holder as Attorney General by a vote of 75 to 21. However, two other high-level nominees, Nancy Killefer and Tom Daschle, withdrew their nominations over failure to pay income taxes. It's still hard to fathom how the Senate could confirm tax scofflaw Tim Geithner as of all things Treasury Secretary and head of the IRS.

Controversial Rendition Program Still in Place?

The LA Times provides an interesting follow-up to the hoopla surrounding Obama's recent flurry of executive orders.

The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

Military Trial Going Forward

A U.S. Army judge, in effect, has told the administration, "Yes, We Can!"

A military judge threw a wrench [Thursday] into the Obama administration's plan to suspend legal proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, denying the government's request to delay the case of a detainee accused of planning the 2000 attack on the USS Cole.

To halt proceedings for 120 days -- as Obama wants in order to conduct a review -- the Pentagon may be forced to temporarily withdraw charges against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and possibly 20 other detainees facing trial in military commissions, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The administration, which expected military judges to agree to its motions seeking suspension, was taken aback by yesterday's decision. Judges in other cases, including one involving five Sept. 11 defendants, had quickly agreed to the government's request.

Col. James Pohl, the chief judge in Gitmo, said the administration's arguments to delay the scheduled arraignment of Nashiri were "unpersuasive," and would deny the public's interest in a speedy trial. Click here and here for the full story.

Pay Discrimination Bill Becomes Law

Ever have a boss who was impossible to deal with? Okay, that's a rhetorical question. There's no question that in general employers can and will treat employees in an unfair, arbitrary, stingy, and irrational manner. We have first-hand knowledge of hard-working, conscientious employees who got a raw deal. Sometimes the unfairness rises to the level of illegal discrimination, but often--for better or worse--it doesn't. Falling short of an actual labor-law violation never justifies an employer's bad acts, but it just means that there is no remedy to be found in the courthouse. At the same time, let's face it; there are employees who are clearly working the system, at the expense of those workers legitimately wronged.

Today, the president signed a bill known as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009--a huge bonanza to the trial lawyers and a recordkeeping nightmare for employers--that overrules a May 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said that workers had to file equal pay lawsuits within 180 days. Ledbetter, the plaintiff/appellant in that case, worked at Goodyear's Gadsden, Alabama, plant from 1979 until 1998 when she took early retirement.

Under this newly signed legislation which the Obama's Congressional allies fast tracked to the president's desk, each new allegedly discriminatory paycheck extends the statute of limitations for a second 180 days. In other words, the measure will make it easier for workers to file claims for pay bias. But as a practical matter, extending the deadline seems to undermine the whole idea of having a statue of limitations of any kind. The full text of the bill can be found here.

If a particular legal deadline is legitimately unfair to workers who are really harmed (rather than just based on political posturing), why not consider some flexibility if it makes sense? But is this new law based on a faulty premise?

Karen Lee Torre suggests in the Connecticut Law Tribune that Lilly Ledbetter herself--who palled around with Obama on the campaign trail--appears to lack "clean hands," as they say in legal jargon:

As a plaintiff-side employment litigator, I am expected to join the chorus championing a congressional override of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. The bill is a political scam. If Congress wants to amend Title VII and greatly expand the statute of limitations for employment discrimination claims, it is certainly within its authority to do that, the wisdom of it aside. But supporters of the Ledbetter bill have engaged in dishonest rhetoric in portraying her as a victim of both her employer and the Supreme Court justices who affirmed the Eleventh Circuit’s dismissal of her claims as time-barred….

I have represented many sex discrimination victims. I have won their cases. After 20 years of such efforts, I know a victim when I see one. Let me tell you something: Lilly Ledbetter is no victim...

Ledbetter waited until she retired to sue Goodyear for “discrimination” she allegedly suffered 12 years earlier. Goodyear, like many employers, awarded salary increases based on annual performance reviews. Ledbetter’s supervisor at the time of the alleged discrimination did not think much of her performance and she did not get a raise. (Nor did Ledbetter get a raise in the last two years of her employment – for the same reasons of weak performance, but notably she did not claim those decisions were discriminatory).

While she was working, Ledbetter never complained, filed no grievance, and Goodyear never knew that she thought that particular performance review was the product of gender bias. Way more than a decade later, after Ledbetter walked out the door with her retirement benefits, she hit Goodyear with a lawsuit, the basis of which was the claim that the initial poor reviews affected her salary for the rest of her tenure...

Here’s another fact ignored in the political rhetoric. Ledbetter, for unexplained reasons, abandoned an Equal Pay Act claim asserted in her suit. The Equal Pay Act does not contain Title VII’s filing limitations, nor does it require plaintiffs to prove intent. It was a much better claim, easier to prove, and it was timely.

The bill even allows family members and others "affected by application of a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice" to file claims, which could really open the floodgates.

Writing for the majority in the Ledbetter decision, Justice Alito cited various precedents in observing that:

Statutes of limitations serve a policy of repose...They “represent a pervasive legislative judgment that it is unjust to fail to put the adversary on notice to defend within a specified period of time and that ‘the right to be free of stale claims in time comes to prevail over the right to prosecute them.’” The EEOC filing deadline “protect[s] employers from the burden of defending claims arising from employment decisions that are long past....” Certainly, the 180-day EEOC charging deadline...is short by any measure, but “[b]y choosing what are obviously quite short deadlines, Congress clearly intended to encourage the prompt processing of all charges of employment discrimination...." This short deadline reflects Congress’ strong preference for the prompt resolution of employment discrimination allegations through voluntary conciliation and cooperation.

This bill, which amends Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, is the first piece of legislation signed by the new president, who was elected in part to straighten out the country's financial mess. We're not carrying water for management, but with a bad economy, high unemployment, and many companies teetering on the brink, should we really be subjecting more of them to never-ending litigation?

Update: Writing in the National Journal, Stuart Taylor says that the new law "seem likely to make it harder than ever for employers to defend themselves against bogus (as well as valid) discrimination claims, effectively adding to the cost of each new hire. This would be justified if job discrimination were indeed pervasive." Taylor's take on the law can be found here. And Hans Bader of OpenMarket.org describes the distorted media coverage of the Supreme Court decision.