While Obama Says One Thing His Department and Agencies Uphold Terrible Bushite Policies and Precedures
Who is the attorney general, Eric Holder or the 53 attorney holdovers from the Bush administration?
It seems the latter as the Obama DOJ keeps upholding the most egregious anti-rule of law and anti-human rights violations of criminal Bush regime like the torture cases.
Now they are being joined by the Departments of Homeland Security and State.
From William Fisher at IPS News: "A leading legal rights group charged Tuesday that the Barack Obama Justice Department is using immigration law to censor debate by selectively barring U.S. entry to foreign scholars.
"The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) appeared in a federal appeals court in New York City Tuesday to argue that a Swiss professor and leading Muslim scholar was denied entry to the U.S. based on his political views..
"The ACLU argued that the government’s exclusion of Professor Tariq Ramadan is illegal and was motivated not by anything he did but by his vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy.
"Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU, the lead lawyer in the case, told IPS, 'It is disappointing to see the lawyers from the Obama Justice Department taking exactly the same positions as their predecessors during the Bush era.'
"He added, 'Our position is that the government should not be using immigration law to limit free speech within the U.S. By denying visas to prominent foreign scholars and writers simply because they were critical of United States foreign policy, the Bush administration used immigration laws to skew and stifle political debate inside the U.S.'
" 'The Bush administration was wrong to revive this Cold War practice, and the Obama administration should not defend it,' he said.
"The Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.
"The position of the government during the George W. Bush presidency was that the courts have no jurisdiction over immigration matters. Obama lawyers reiterated that position in court Tuesday.
"Ramadan was invited to teach at the University of Notre Dame in 2004. The U.S. government first granted but then suddenly revoked his visa, citing a statute that applies to those who have "endorsed or espoused" terrorism.
"After the ACLU filed suit, the government abandoned its claim that Ramadan had endorsed terrorism, but it continued to exclude him because he made small donations to a Swiss charity that the government alleges had given money to Hamas.
"The ACLU noted that, during the Cold War, the U.S. 'used ideological exclusion to bar artists who were vocal critics of U.S. policy,' including Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and British novelist Doris Lessing.
"The ACLU and other human rights groups are urging the courts to revisit several specific cases of ideological exclusion, including those of Haluk Gerger, a Turkish journalist; Dora Maria Tellez, a Nicaraguan human rights activist; Adam Habib, a South African political commentator; in addition to Prof. Ramadan. Ramadan is a Swiss Islamic scholar who now teaches at Oxford University in Britain."
Daphne Eviatar at The Washington Independent also has an article about what she terms the New McCarthyism.
"In January 2004, Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss professor of Muslim studies and visiting fellow at St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, was offered a tenured position as a professor of religion, conflict and peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. He applied for and received a visa to come to the United States that May. But just nine days before the 44-year-old academic and his family were to move to Indiana, Ramadan was informed by the United States Embassy in Switzerland that his visa had been revoked..
"At a press conference on August 25, a spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security said that Ramadan’s visa had been revoked based on a part of the USA Patriot Act that allows the government to exclude those who have “endorsed or espoused” terrorism.
"Although considered a legitimate charity in Europe, since Ramadan made his donations the group has been deemed 'a designated terrorist organization' by the United States because it supposedly gave money to Hamas. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, modified in 2005 by the REAL ID Act, the U.S. government may exclude anyone who has given money to a terrorist organization.
"Ramadan, for his part, insists that when he made the donations to the Association de Secours Palestinien he had no idea the group was supporting Hamas. After all, the United States had not yet blacklisted the organization. He even submitted to the court an affidavit of an expert testifying that someone in his position would have had no reason to know that the group supported Hamas before the United States determined that it did in 2005.
"Dozens of scholars, lawyers, religious groups and civil liberties advocates are not satisifed with the government’s response. They’re now urging the Obama administration, whose Department of Homeland Security makes these decisions – to stop denying entry to people on ideological grounds.
"In a letter sent last week to Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, The American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Society of American Law Teachers, the Constitution Project and more than 70 other legal, civil rights and human rights organizations urged the Obama administration to stop denying foreign scholars, artists, and activists visas on the basis of their political views and associations.
"The more than 70 groups who wrote to the Obama administration last week, however, asked the government to use its discretion more carefully, to deny people only on the basis of 'articulable national security interests unrelated to the applicant’s political beliefs or associations,' and to specifically review the cases of Professor Ramadan and six other scholars, journalists and activists who have been refused admission to the United States, apparently based on their politics.
“ 'Ideological exclusion compromises the vitality of academic and political debate in the United States at a time when that debate is exceptionally important,' write the letter’s signatories. 'The practice was misguided during the Cold War and it is misguided now.' "
Perhaps Holder, Clinton, and Napolitano didn't carefully study the history of the US government during the McCarthy era with the FBI investigating and blacklisting ethnic and religious organizations without adequate proof on the say-so of a drunken, lying, Republican senator, Joe McCarthy. McCarthy, with the support of the GOP and its inside Washington flunkies, turned this country into an anti-democratic, authoritarian, guilty until proven innocent if then, anti-Constitution nation until long after he was finally shamed by a courageous lawyer and famous newsman.
Unfortunately, McCarthy's dishonest and dishonorable spirit and dirty tricks stil live on in today's right wing conservatism..
These three departments, in this and other immigration cases, are apparently following the same pattern as the GOP right wing Bush regime that trampled the Constitution, human rights, and rule of law and committed high crimes and misdemeanors including railroading the terrible Patriot Act into law by a Republican controlled, Bush rubber stamping Congress that also defied the Constitution.
It is ironic that Tariq Ramadan was invited to teach at Notre Dame where President Obama will be speaking at that university's commencement in May, yet his Departments of Homeland Security, State, and Justice are upholding the criminal and corrupt Bush regime's exclusion from the US of this Swiss professor and scholar, despite his being offered a postition as a tenured professor by the eminent Roman Catholic university here in the U.S.
McCarthyism during a Democratic administration.. How low can you go?
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