Search: unwilling or unable

28 Sep Reforming Intelligence Oversight

...of these intelligence types will face any sanction for their acts, simply because the Justice Department is simply unwilling to bring those cases. Moreover, the departments are so willing to do things like give people use immunity, try to get pardons in advance, and those with the power so willing to give these things that the whole arena of oversight is one thing - a joke. It is smoke and mirrors to the American public about any sense of rule of law in this space. So all the hand wringing...

12 Aug John Bellinger Reflects on the 61st Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions

...process in good faith rather than what it appeared to be as a process to allow torture, then I could see going down that path. But, my understanding of the universal or almost universal rejection of those US efforts was that, around the world, states were unwilling to enter into such a discussion when they sensed that the underlying purpose was to legitimize the US torture. They might play games through intelligence services to show they were "helpful" to the US due to US pressure, but they were not going...

31 May The Very Mild Fallout from the NYT Expose on US Drone Strikes

...those academics and others who were absolutely unwilling to consider the evidence of civilian casualties as credible; for example, I was on an Al Jazeera show a few days back where Christine Fair was absolutely refusing to accept that there have been *any* civilian casualties of drone strikes because her 'sources' told her so. She rubbished the reports of the BIJ, New America Foundation and anyone else as using flawed methodology to count civilian casualties but was saying the USG methodology is sound - we all know how sound that...

26 Aug Texas Governor Responds to EU’s Request for Death Penalty Moratorium

...be noted that Texas declared independence not from a European monarch but from Mexico in 1836. Matthew Gross Please explain. Would you also say that the United States has no business urging Europeans to stop doing business with terrorist countries? And what about China? Must the United States make no diplomatic attempts to stop China from engaging in practices we perceive to be major human rights or intellectual property violations? Those are false analogies. The EU essentially brow-beat an unwilling populace, and then countries that wanted admittance, into approving an...

02 Sep 11th Circuit Dismisses ATS Claims in Bolivia Case

...have never understood the unwillingness of US administrations to enter such litigation (save relatively rarely), if only to assert that the government’s views can never be ignored. But it seems to me politically the worst idea of all to fail to enter all but a few of such cases across many many years – and then suddenly assert that the US government’s views suddenly are hugely important only when China, and its officials or former officials, are being sued in US court. It would be a horrible signal to send...

12 Jun The Territorial Reach of the Constitution

...society for the Executive and Legislative to confront some type of check. Why? Because for seven years the Executive and Legislative have demonstrated that they are unwilling to act in a manner consistent with the good faith that is the predicate for the kind of judicial deference those in the minority would prefer. Best, Ben Benjamin Davis Souter's concurrence points out the essence of what is going on here After six years of sustained executive detentions in Guantanamo, subject to habeas jurisdiction but without any actual habeas scrutiny, today’s decision...