I'm not sure why this didn't become a big story given the media's tendency to make everything Newt Gingrich says news: Back in November at David Horowitz's "Restoration Weekend" conference, Gingrich called for Attorney General Eric Holder to be impeached over bringing Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators to New York for trial (via Andrew Sullivan):
Now you have an Attorney General whose basic position is, let's have a public trial under American criminal defense models, with their lawyers having access, or demanding access, or suggesting access, frankly, someone should suggest a resolution of impeachment.
(applause)
Let me try to illustrate my point, because I think it's why the concept of replace rather than reform is so important. I don't want to be told that appointing an Attorney General whose law firm was pro bono defending terrorists makes sense. I don't want to be told that when he appoints lawyers whose law firms defended terrorists pro bono makes sense. I don't want to be told that people who care more about the rights of terrorists than the lives of the American people makes sense.
It's rather remarkable, but this idea that the U.S. Justice Department is now filled with Al Qaeda sympathizers -- an idea that originated with National Review's Andy McCarthy -- has spread throughout the Republican Party and even to the U.S. Senate. First, Republicans assume that every single person ever captured by the United States is guilty of being a terrorist -- an absurd notion given how many people the U.S. has released from Guantanamo. Now, those lawyers who worked to preserve a system that guarantees the right to a fair trial to anyone accused of a crime are somehow "unfit" to serve in the Justice Department. Of course, National Review also wrote in an editorial that the courts were "pro-terrorist," so I supposed it's just a matter of time before we need to abandon the two non-executive branches of American democracy to "protect" ourselves from Al Qaeda.
Moreover, there's nothing unique about the approach the Obama administration is taking, where some suspected terrorists are tried by military commissions and others in civilian courts. It's exactly what the Bush administration did. That's what makes Gingrich's argument that the attorney general is committing an impeachable offense by giving terror suspects "a public trial under American criminal defense models" utterly ridiculous.
Of course, the kind of person that you want to serve in the Justice Department is the kind of person who is going to follow the law, even when it gets difficult or even tempting to do otherwise -- you want the kind of person who thinks the law is important enough not to be bent or broken whenever it becomes inconvenient. Sadly, within the party of torture, such people are becoming increasingly rare. With the possibility that the current administration will preserve the legal architecture of torture, one can only imagine the horror show once the White House changes hands, now that opposition to fair trials is a major part of one of battle cries of one of the two major political parties in this country.
Gingrich later added, without irony, that he thought the ACLU's lawsuit* challenging the placement of a cross, meant to be a war memorial, on federal land in the Mojave desert was "a sign of a fascist mentality." As opposed to holding people indefinitely without trial, or inventing a new legal system to try criminals that is reverse engineered to convict them. That's "freedom."
-- A. Serwer
*Incidentally, the ACLU is representing a Jewish veterans group. In case you're still wondering why Jews don't vote Republican.
