Liz Cheney (Dick's daughter) to fuck Obama next election?

[obama.bin.laden]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ck-Cheney-considering-running-for-office.html


Daughter of Dick Cheney considering running for office
The daughter of the former US Vice President, Dick Cheney, is considering running for office after emerging as a leading critic of Barack Obama.


Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 5:43PM GMT 08 Mar 2010
Dick Cheney hospitalised with chest pains
Former US vice president Dick Cheney has had four heart attacks Photo: AP

Liz Cheney, a mother of five children, has become one of the sharpest and most outspoken critics of the new White House and has needled the Obama administration for failing to protect the nation against terrorism, and mollycoddling terror suspects while pursuing government lawyers who approved water-boarding, a method of inquisition she approves of. She called the president's Nobel Peace prize a "farce".

Pushed by friends and family, Ms Cheney is now reportedly contemplating a run for office herself either in Virginia, where she was raised, or in Wyoming, her parents' home state.

A former senior state department official on the Middle East, the 43-year-old has already attracted favourable comparisons with as a more substantive version of Sarah Palin, another conservative working mother.

"She's likely to seek office," was the judgment of Karl Rove, the former chief adviser to George W Bush.

"I'd love to see her run for office someday," said her father, 69, recently. "I think she's got a lot to offer, and it's been a great career for me, and if she has the interest, and I think she does, then I would like to see her embark upon a career in politics."

In 40 television appearances in the past year, Ms Cheney has robustly defended her father against criticism that he was the sinister force behind war on terror policies that subverted the norms of American justice, arguing that he and Mr Bush did nothing illegal and kept the country safe after 9/11.

Alan Simpson, a former Wyoming senator and old friend of the Cheneys, told New York magazine: "They were hurt, Liz especially. There's always the feeling of the unfairness of the treatment of her dad. That would drive a person."

Despite leaving office with an approval rating of just 13 per cent, Mr Cheney tackled Mr Obama's policies early on, questioning his decision to close the prison for terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay.

His daughter soon emerged by his side, launching Keep America Safe, a pressure group devoted to keeping Guantánamo open and attacking Mr Obama's security policies such as the decision to put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged September 11 plotters on trial in criminal rather than military courts.

It has already courted controversy with an internet campaign questioning the values of the "al-Qaeda 7", seven lawyers appointed to the Justice Department by Mr Obama who had represented terror suspects.

Keep America Safe's campaign was criticised by fellow conservatives yesterday as "shameful" and "unjust" by 19 lawyers, ex-Bush officials and policy experts.

The attacks, it said, were "both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications".

A number of Republicans in the Senate, where Ms Cheney may well move next, have however supported her initiative.

 

[obama.bin.laden]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-payne/liz-cheney-its-your-fathe_b_516998.html


Scott Payne
Scott Payne

Policy Advisor, Third Way
Posted: March 29, 2010 11:03 AM
BIO Become a Fan
Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index




Liz Cheney, It's Your Father's Fault

Last Monday, a federal judge ordered al Qaeda member Mohamedou Slahi released from Guantanamo Bay. In response, Liz Cheney's fear-mongering ultra-conservative group, Keep America Safe, tweeted "This is BAD." Liz is right. This is bad, and it's her father's fault.

Slahi was cited in the 9/11 Commission Report as a key recruiter for al Qaeda, suspected of recruiting Mohammad Atta and other members of the Hamburg cell involved in the 9/11 attacks. He is a dangerous man who needs to be in custody and should face justice for his role in attacking the United States. Unfortunately, the decisions made by the Bush administration have delayed punishing Slahi for more than seven years. While he should already have been sentenced to life in prison or death for his role in killing 3,000 Americans, Slahi sits in Guantanamo, where he tends to his tomato farm.

Conservatives will argue that the judge's order to release Slahi is somehow the fault of the Obama administration or 'liberal judges,' but three specific Bush administration decisions--pushed by Dick Cheney and now defended by Liz--are responsible for the order to release Slahi: the decision to allow torture of suspected terrorists, the creation of the Guantanamo Bay to detain them, and the failed attempt to use military commissions to prosecute them. Together, these decisions created a system incapable of punishing Slahi, and they now undermine our ability to detain a very dangerous man.

The Bush administration authorized torture. Because of that, we do not have enough admissible evidence to try Slahi in federal court or even in a military tribunal. In 2003 and 2004, military prosecutors wanted to seek the death penalty against Slahi. However, the Marine Corps prosecutor assigned to the case refused to bring charges against him, because, even in a military tribunal, evidence gained from torture is inadmissible.

Secondly, the Bush administration opened the Guantanamo Bay facility to keep detainees out of the reach of the US judicial system. However, federal courts have repeatedly ruled on cases involving Guantanamo detainees. We get all of the negatives of Gitmo--propaganda for terrorists and anger from our allies--without any of the supposed benefits of keeping detainees out of the court system.

Finally, the Bush administration decided it would try all the detainees at Guantanamo through a military tribunal process. However, the Supreme Court, with a Republican appointed majority, has twice rejected systems created by the Bush administration. At this point, we do not have a military tribunal system in place that we are confident would stand up to a legal challenge, meaning the perpetrators of 9/11 and other terrorists have yet to face justice.

While there is no chance Slahi will be released in the near future (the Obama administration still has several levels of appeals left while they try to determine how to legally hold him), the Bush administration's decisions have left our long term ability to hold him in doubt.

Conservatives have already taken the opportunity to attack the Obama administration over this ruling, but their anger is directed in the wrong direction. Rather than attack the current administration, they should ask Liz Cheney to give her father a call and ask why his policies have made America less safe and denied justice for the victims of 9/11 and their families.

 

[obama.bin.laden]

http://blogs.ajc.com/bob-barr-blog/...awyers-drop-dead/?cxntfid=blogs_bob_barr_blog


The Barr Code
Cheney to lawyers: “drop dead”

6:00 am March 10, 2010, by Bob Barr

Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, appears to have inherited her father’s disdain for the niceties of constitutional principles. The former vice president was well-known throughout his tenure in that job, for missing no opportunity to praise the use of torture (which he referred to euphemistically as “enhanced interrogation techniques”) against those suspected of violating US anti-terrorism laws, and for often belittling those who believed that the Bill of Rights might actually apply to those charged with committing acts of terrorism.

Mr. Cheney’s daughter, now herself a darling of the GOP, has been burnishing her credentials as a chip off the old block. From her perch as chair of the recently-formed, neo-conservative “Keep America Safe,” Ms. Cheney has publicly mocked lawyers at the US Department of Justice for having engaged in what she believes to have been a most un-American of activities — previously providing legal advice or counsel to persons accused of commiting acts of terrorism in violation of American law.

Apparently, at least for some defendants in our system of justice, the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which among other things, guarantees to those accused of a criminal offense the right to have counsel in their defense, now occupies a place on that lengthening list of rights enumerated in our Constitution that the Cheney clan has decided we no longer need.

In fact, in Cheney World, lawyers who dared to provide legal counsel for those facing such serious charges as committing acts of terrorism should be forever thereafter barred from serving in any government job; and also probably should be branded on their forhead with a scarlet “T” (for “terrorism lover”).

A recent video solicitation for Keep America Safe made this point graphically, when it chided Attorney General Holder for not “releasing” the names of certain Justice Department lawyers who in their previous careers had something to do with providing legal counsel for alleged terrorists. The video called these US lawyers serving in the Justice Department, the “Al Qaeda Seven.”

While this disgraceful pandering to the extreme right undoubtedly will resonate with Ms. Cheney’s family — both her biological family and her extended political family — her actions went beyond the pale for at least one group of Republicans. A group of lawyers who served previously under Republican presidents has issued a public denunciation of Ms. Cheney’s tactics; calling them “unjust,” “destructive” and “shameful.” The letter was signed by former Independent Counsel Ken Starr and fomer Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, among others.

Unfortunately, the well-reasoned and historially-sound arguments made by these distinguished barristers will likely fall on deaf ears in Republican circles on Capitol Hill. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), for example, continues his drive to ferret out terrorist-hugging lawyers in the Obama Administration. And Liz Cheney already has accepted an invite to speak next month at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, where her cries to tar and feather Justice Department lawyers for having represented individuals she and her father don’t like, will almost certainly be met by rousing cheers.

Former Vice-president and President John Adams, who earlier in his legal career represented the highly-unpopular British “Redcoats” accused of shooting civilians in the Boston Massacre, must be turning in his grave. But here, above ground, the most recent former vice president beams at his daughter as she trashes public servants for putting constiutional principles to work in our justice system.