[yahoogroups rejected my first try, so I'm resending this message]
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From: CraigGingold <gingold@xxxxxxx>
To: NewPacifica@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Freekpfk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
fulcrumsofchange@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Bay_area_activist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Gitmo Attorneys Endorse Obama
Copies to: Flashpoints@xxxxxxxx, dbernstein@xxxxxxx,
danny@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Steve Rendall <rendall_2000@xxxxxxxxx>,
LFlanders@xxxxxxx, Robert Knight <theknightreport@xxxxxxxxx>,
Norman Solomon <mediabeat@xxxxxxxxxxx>, againstthegrain@xxxxxxxx,
lbensky@xxxxxxx, hardknock@xxxxxxxx, sam@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Date sent: Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:56:48 -0800
I just heard (on Free Speech Radio News) some crackpot protester
outside last night's Democratic "debate" in Los Angeles refer to Obama
as a "right wing candidate".
How stupid can you get. I guess that means anybody to the right of Che
Guevarra is a "right-winger". I'm pretty sure this will come as something of
a surprise to, for example, Michael Ratner (see below).
Here's a story that's gone mostly unnoticed; there was a *very brief*
mention on Dem Now, but no other news reports that I could find,
except for Fox News -- no doubt, hoping to make him look like a
"dangerous radical".
Craig Gingold
++++++++++++++++++
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/v-print/story/397317.html
Posted on Tue, Jan. 29, 2008
Attorneys for Guantánamo captives back Obama's bid
By CAROL ROSENBERG
More than 80 attorneys who have been offering free-of-charge legal services to
Guantánamo detainees issued a statement Monday supporting Democrat Barack
Obama's presidential bid.
''We are at a critical point in the presidential campaign, and as lawyers who
have been deeply involved in the Guantánamo litigation to preserve the
important
right to habeas corpus, we are writing to urge you to support Senator Obama,''
the lawyers said in an open letter dated Monday.
Lawyers signing it included partners from major U.S. law firms and small-town
practitioners as well as Michael Ratner, whose New York Center for
Constitutional
Rights has for years coordinated legal efforts to provide representation to
each
of the men held without charge at the offshore prison compound in southeast
Cuba.
In 2006, Congress stripped the Guantánamo captives of the traditional right to
file writs of habeas corpus in U.S. district court to challenge their detention
--
and instead offered detainees more limited appeals in federal courts.
The U.S. Supreme Court is now reviewing the constitutionality of that law.
POLITICAL ISSUE
Guantánamo has not been a major theme of the presidential campaign, but
mainstream candidates on both sides -- notably former Vietnam POW John McCain,
the Republican senator -- have said they would move to close the prison camps
because they have stirred anti-American anger across the globe.
Obama has gone further than many. In a November, he pledged to both close the
prison camps and ''restore habeas corpus,'' a position that Democratic rival
John
Edwards has also staked out.
Hillary Clinton, likewise, has said from the U.S. Senate that she favors
closure.
But she has not prominently included pledges to do it in her campaign speeches.
Republican candidate Mitt Romney, in contrast, has advocated doubling the
detention center -- which today holds about 275 foreign men as enemy combatants
and cell space for more than 1,500.
The Pentagon calls the war-on-terrorism compound a post-9/11 necessity and says
captives there are held humanely, many of whom can go before military boards to
argue they are no threat to the United States and should be set free.
THOSE WHO SIGNED
Lawyers signing the letter included East Coast law school professors, who have
visited the U.S. Navy base to defend individual detainees, as well as corporate
lawyers for Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Yemeni detainees. None of the lawyers who
signed
the letter are from Florida.
Also among the signers are Wells Dixon and Gitanjali Gutierrez, the only
lawyers
so far to meet with a formerly CIA-held ''high-value detainee.'' Last year,
they
met with Baltimore-educated captive Majid Khan in a special segregated section
of
the prison camps. They accuse the U.S. government of subjecting their client to
a
program of state-sponsored torture.
The CIA says it doesn't engage in torture.
Others who signed the letter included a former federal judge, John Gibbons of
Newark, N.J., who successfully argued the first Guantánamo detainee case before
the U.S. Supreme Court, Rasul v. Bush, and a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral,
Donald Guter, who likewise argued against Bush policy.
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