Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

More on Mora and the ‘Mora Memo’

Posted on February 20, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Further to yesterday’s item on Alberto Mora, here are links to Jane Mayer’s article in The New Yorker (these links tend to be perishable), and to the full text of the Mora memo. The Mayer article gives great detail of Mora’s heroic, but unsuccessful, attempts to prevent Cheney’s retainers from dragging us into the muck.

One of the most amazing revelations from the Mayer story is that Mora was part of a working group of DoD lawyers who objected to the torture policy; they were thus removed from the loop. While they thought their objections had stopped the policy going forward, in fact a report approving it was issued in the name of the working group they had been cut out of.

Legal critics within the Administration had been allowed to think that they were engaged in a meaningful process; but their deliberations appeared to have been largely an academic exercise, or, worse, a charade. “It seems that there was a two-track program here,” said Martin Lederman, a former lawyer with the Office of Legal Counsel, who is now a visiting professor at Georgetown. “Otherwise, why would they share the final working-group report with Hill and Miller but not with the lawyers who were its ostensible authors?”

But read the whole Mayer article. Yes, it’s amazing how bad things have gotten. Even so, I refuse to be amazed that good people stood up against it — I’ll just be proud.

Posted in Torture | Comments Off on More on Mora and the ‘Mora Memo’

Senior Navy Lawyer Who Opposed Torture is UM Alum

Posted on February 19, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

One of the Pentagon’s top civilian lawyers repeatedly challenged the Bush administration’s policy on the coercive interrogation of terror suspects, arguing that such practices violated the law, verged on torture and could ultimately expose senior officials to prosecution, a newly disclosed document shows.

I’d just like to note that Alberto J. Mora, the subject of Monday’s NYT article, Senior Lawyer at Pentagon Broke Ranks on Detainees is an alumnus of the University of Miami School of Law.

“Even if one wanted to authorize the U.S. military to conduct coercive interrogations, as was the case in Guantánamo, how could one do so without profoundly altering its core values and character?” Mr. Mora asked the Pentagon’s chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II, according to the memorandum.

Indeed.

Posted in Torture, U.Miami | Comments Off on Senior Navy Lawyer Who Opposed Torture is UM Alum

Avian Flu Avian Flu Avian Flu

Posted on February 19, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al. brings us this really cheerful prediction about avian flu from the Boston Globe:

”We’re not going to have much warning,” [WHO Scientist Dr. Michael] Ryan said. ”One day, two days, maybe three, if we are extremely lucky. Once contagious among humans, the virus will spread like a tsunami. There will be the flash point — probably in Asia, perhaps somewhere else — followed by waves of infection that would hurtle around the world.”

It could be awful:

In worst-case scenarios based on extrapolations from the 1918 outbreak, some epidemiologists predict that a pandemic spawned by bird flu could kill 140 million people in a matter of months, and sicken so many hundreds of millions that some governments and national economies would collapse.

Or it could just be really really bad:

The World Health Organization is urging countries to brace for a ”mild to moderate” pandemic likely to kill 2 million to 7.4 million people, according to Ryan.

”We need to steer away from worst-case scenarios or we’ll end up like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, too terrified to move,” he said. ”We need preparation, not panic.”

Posted in Science/Medicine | 1 Comment

How to Speed Clean Your Kitchen — Not.

Posted on February 19, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

We now have a nice new kitchen. In fact, although I haven’t blogged about his in ages, we have about 98% of a nice new house, only about a year and a half behind schedule. This means there is less daily angst, but there is more to clean. An article with the enticing title of How to Speed-Clean Your Kitchen thus seems very enticing.

Alas, step one reads like this:

1. Fill sink to the rim with very hot water; add one cup regular bleach. Soak for one hour.
2. Drain and rinse thoroughly.
3. Scrub with Ajax, Bon Ami, or baking soda.
4. Be sure to rinse thoroughly.
5. Shine with Windex or another glass-cleaning spray. Dry thoroughly.

Now I’m sure this is fine advice but anything that takes an hour and then requires several more steps is not my idea of speed cleaning.

Posted in Adventures in Remodeling | 5 Comments

No Bail for Padilla

Posted on February 17, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Judge Martha Cooke denied bail for Jose Padilla today. She cited several facts which together, I think, make the decision unassailable:

‘Dirty bomb’ suspect Padilla to remain in jail without bail: Government lawyers maintained that Padilla, who has a lengthy criminal record — including murder as a juvenile in 1985 — and a wife and children in Egypt, is both a danger to the community and a flight risk. He also used several aliases, prosecutors said.

Cooke said she was mindful of the unusual circumstances of Padilla’s detention, but would not allow his release. She noted that Padilla had failed to show up for court appearances in connection with criminal charges brought in the late 1980s and early ’90s when Padilla was involved with a Chicago gang.

According to this sympathetic profile by SusanDeborah Sontag, Padilla’s (second) wife lives in Egypt.

Posted in Padilla | 10 Comments

A Novel Approach to Gym Class

Posted on February 17, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The story has a Miami dateline, but it actually happened in a rural part of Florida’s panhandle — an area that is culturally more Alabama than anything else. It seems that Ernest Ward Middle School gym teacher Terence Braxton is alleged to have let kids cut gym for $1/day,

Fla. Teacher Charged as Children Pay to Cut Gym: Braxton allowed kids to skip his class if they paid him $1 a day, according to charges filed by authorities in Escambia County, Fla. They say he may have racked up more than $1,000 over three months.

The 28-year-old teacher has been charged with six felony counts of bribery and turned himself in on Thursday at a Pensacola jail. He was released on his own recognizance.

…

“The basketball team had lost every game for five years,” Principal Nancy Gindl-Perry said. “This year, we only lost two games, and they were only by two points. He had a very good rapport with the kids.”

Suspicions about Braxton arose during a parent-teacher conference, when the teacher known as “Coach Braxton” and a student differed on attendance records.

“Coach said he’d missed four or five classes,” Gindl-Perry recalled. “Well, the look on the child’s face. Then the mother said, ‘You told your dad and I you only missed one.'”

For some reason it reminds me of the old Woody Allen line: “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym. Those who can’t teach gym, teach here.”

Posted in Florida | 7 Comments