SD Fla blog has an eyewitness account of today’s Padilla hearing. Bottom line: plea of “absolutely not guilty”. And, oh yes, no bail.
I would have gone, except I had a prior engagement to attend this arbitration event. It was very interesting, although less historic.
I attended a seminar downtown today on “European Union Law and U.S. Business: Front Line Issues of International Dispute Resolution” sponsored by the UM EU Center (with help from the UM law school), and Greenberg, Traurig.
It was an unusually high-quality event, but as arbitration law is something of a specialist taste, you’ll have to click “there’s more” to read my notes from it. (Unless of course you get the full feed, or followed a link to this post, in which case you get to enjoy the whole thing right now.) I’m interested in this stuff because back when I was in private practice, I worked in the London office of US law firm doing international arbitration, and have very occasionally since then acted as an arbitrator.
I’m attending a great seminar downtown today on “European Union Law and U.S. Business: Front Line Issues of International Dispute Resolution” sponsored by the UM EU Center (with help from the UM law school), and Greenberg, Traurig. If I am organized about taking notes, I may post them later…
Yesterday I quoted from what purports to be a transcript of a debate John Yoo took part in on Dec. 1, organized by the Chicago Foreign Relations Committee, and linked to what purports to be a recording of the talk. The opinions expressed are so crazed that I said, “Let us pray this is a fake.” And I meant it.
Perhaps that prayer is being answered. Or perhaps not. I’ve now heard — but only second hand — from an attendee that in fact no such comments were made at the talk. But this debunking is not, I gather, for attribution. So I don’t know what is going on.
More info if and as soon as I get it.
I’m going to be on Sirius Satellite Radio (nothing but the big audiences for me!) tonight at about 7:05pm east coast time, talking about the “Unitary Executive,” or how to decode Judge Alito when he says “if it’s unconstitutional, then the President can’t wiretap you in defiance of a statutory command” [translation: he hasn’t said anything, since he believes in a theory that says it is (sometimes? often? always?) constitutional anyway].
The show is called Young Turks and carries the slightly ominous subtitle “We Don’t Make the News. We Make the News Sexy!”
How on earth they will achieve that with me I can only nervously imagine. But for those who, like me, don’t have a Sirius Satellite Radio (‘Howard who?’), or even a joke one, I’m told you can listen to the live online feed.
Leaked fax ‘shows Romania helped CIA interrogators’:
An Egyptian government fax intercepted by Swiss intelligence offers the first “real evidence” that the US interrogated suspected terrorists at secret prisons in Eastern Europe, European politicians said yesterday.
The highly-classified fax, purportedly sent late last year by Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, to its embassy in London, was leaked to a Swiss newspaper on Sunday.
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Egypt has not confirmed the authenticity of the fax. But MEPs described it as “a hugely significant step” when angry Swiss authorities confirmed the leak was based on a communication intercepted by a top secret surveillance system, known as Onyx.
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The Romanian defence ministry “categorically” denied the content of the latest leaked Egyptian fax. According to Swiss media, the fax went on: “There are similar interrogation centres in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and in Bulgaria.”
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