Sunday, April 6, 2008

Going after medical licenses... part 2

Click on the title for the original blog on cabdrollery....

I did a bit of checking into the history of complaints about gitmo personnel with licenses in California... and it seems there is good reason to make this a state statute as opposed to leaving it in the hands of the agencies that police themselves (we know how that goes, don't we....?)

It seems that back in 2005 a complaint was filed against John Edmondson (the former head of detainee care and a CA licensee). First the California Board denied that it possessed jurisdiction over activities at the base. Then a mandamus action was filed in state court against the board alleging that under CA state law the Board not only possesses jurisdiction but was required to investigate complaints of unprofessional conduct. In response the Board conceded that they possessed jurisdiction but that they were exercising administrative discretion not to proceed in investigating complaints (citing budgetary constraints, inherent difficulties in conducting an investigation abroad, etc.) Ultimately the Guantanamo detainees lost on that point. Anyone familiar with administrative law knows that once an agency gets into the realm of discretion it's almost impossible to force action. Maybe there has been a change on that board since 2005...but I can tell you with certainty that they were rather resistant about digging into this issue at all back then. For that matter so was the AMA, WMA, and WHO.

Maybe we can make all of these agencies do the right thing now? and what about the lawyers and the American Bar Association?

Going after medical licenses... but why stop there?

Click on the title to get to the blog "cabdrollery".... for a discussion about a bill being introduced in California to take away the medical licenses for doctors and psychologists involved in torture ("Thats the Ticket") .... at the end of the article you will notice a discussion that was initiated by one of the gitmo attorneys, suggesting going after the law licenses too... wonder who that was??
I actually sent out emails to a couple of my favorite legal bloggers trying to understand their position on this topic... some seem to have no opinion and others feel as I do... that those who advocate torture on a policy level do not deserve the honor of being an attorney at law.

Latest appellate argument on gitmo issues

On Friday Sabin Willett argued before the U.S. Circuit Court in DC in the case of Parhat vs. the bush gang. The Panel was Sentelle, Garland, Griffith. There are at least two interesting things to report (I am not reporting from an eye witness view as I was not there)... one is the panel didn't seem to be accepting everything the government argued (a nice change for the DC Circuit) in fact the government tried to argue that the standard of review under the Detainee Treatment Act should be a "some evidence" standard (like everything else coming out of the "justice" department it heretofore was not heard of in the law) but interestingly one of the judges was prepared for this nonsense and reminded the government attorney that the solicitor argued in front of the supreme court that the standard was "preponderance of evidence" .. a slightly different standard than "some evidence".
When the transcrip is available I will try to figure out a way to post it... but that brings me to the second interesting part of the argument... part of the argument was done behind closed doors...because of the secrets... you know "national security"... what a crock.
So the Courts might finally be figuring out how they have been hoodwinked these past 7+ years but they still fall for the governments ploy of doing things in secret so the rest of the world can't see or hear the bogus arguments.