A. Friday fun link: Back in the day, after the death of Suck but before the rise of the Poor Man, Modern Humorist was arguably the most consistently funny site on the web. They had a fake preview for Radiohead’s Kid A that’s still on my list.
B. Friday not-so-fun links: Eric Alterman and Paul McLeary’s column on the torture provisions in H.B 10.
Congressman Markey’s amendment (which would have stripped out the torture provisions) did not come up for a vote. An amendment to substitute the Senate version of the bill came up last night. As Katherine notes:
The Senate version of the bill has a stronger national intelligence director with budgetary and personnel authority, strengthens anti-nuclear programs, and generally follows the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations much more closely than the House bill. It does not contain the anti-immigration or torture-outsourcing legalization provisions of the House bill. It passed the Senate by a 96-2 vote. All members of the 9/11 commission support the Senate version, as does the 9/11 Families Steering committee.
This amendment failed on a near party-line vote. Eight Republicans voted for the amendment, 212 against. If I understand correctly, the bill is likely to pass with the torture provisions intact, but there’s still hope for the conference committee. If I’m right, I’ll post the members of the committee as soon as I know them. If I’m wrong about any of this (which I might be), I’ll correct as soon as possible.
It’s times like these when Mickey Kaus’s whizzy “I’m a Democrat who hates Democrats!” act looks a lot less cute.
UPDATE: Katherine notes that the House is still going to vote on the Hostettler amendment, which tones down the language on outsorucing torture without eliminating it. Among other things, it instructs the Department of State to “seek diplomatic assurances” that a suspect not be tortured. This would probably make the deportation of Arar retrospectively legal (ANOTHER UPDATE: maybe not), as Syria assured us that he would not be tortured.
Markey is asking his colleagues to vote no on both the Hostettler amendment and final passage.
{ 7 comments }
djw 10.08.04 at 9:07 pm
What do GOP House leaders think they’re doing here? No support from the president, the Senate….do they think this is an electoral winner? Good lord, this is nuts.
I won’t put much stock in this until we see the conference committee, but my hunch is that the Senators will have none of this. But they should certainly be pushed and encouraged in that direction.
Katherine 10.08.04 at 9:10 pm
Not quite. They’re still voting another amendment, known as the “Hostettler amendment”. It makes section 3032 less “Look world we’re in blatant breach of
the torture convention nyah nyah nyah!” It authorizes indefinite detention at the Homeland Security Secretary’s discretion–which might well be unconstitutional–and instructs the Department of State to “seek diplomatic assurances” that a suspect not be tortured. It does not say what the legal effect of those assurances would be, but it implies that Congress considers them to be sufficient. My guess is that the Department of Homeland Security might then issue regulations saying that such assurances are enough to keep us from violating the Convention Against Tortuer. Since the statute is ambiguous, and agencies are allowed to interpret ambiguous statutes, a court would probably accept it.
Which would mean that Arar’s deportation was legal–we got such assurances from Syria. Sweden got those assurances from Egypt aboiut Agiza and al Zery. In both cases, there were credible allegations after the fact that a suspect was being tortured; they were just ignored. Assurances are worthless when not accompanied by verification.
If I’m right about this, in legal effect it’s not much of a change. And it’s more likely than the original 3032 to be in the version after conference, since I’m sure the WHite House supports it.
Section 3033 is intact.
Markey is asking his colleagues to vote no on both the Hostettler amendment and final passage.
The House doesn’t seem to be in session today.
John Quiggin 10.08.04 at 9:46 pm
The NYT report doesn’t mention the issue at all! Some journal of record.
Katherine 10.08.04 at 10:03 pm
Sorry, I misspoke; I don’t know if it retroactively legalizes Arar’s deportation. (It easily could, I just don’t know.) I meant what happened to Arar would probably be okay in the future.
I may try to call the Center for Constitutional Rights and get their analysis of it.
As for the NY Times, for the paper of record, they’ve broken fewer important news stories than the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal.
Walt Pohl 10.08.04 at 10:36 pm
Since the torture bill makes me need humor more than ever, I tried the link to Modern Humanist, but tragically, it is broken. Like my spirit.
Ted Barlow 10.08.04 at 10:55 pm
Fixed.
Katherine 10.09.04 at 3:23 pm
Both the Hostettler amendment and the final bill passed yesterday.
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