Biased. Incoherent. Below the minimum standards of justice.

Those are some of the harsh words federal appeals courts judges are using to describe the decisions of immigration judges in asylum and related cases.

The Times says part of the problem is the increase in immigration cases lodged in federal appeals courts since former Attorney General John Ashcroft issued new guidelines in 2002 that limited immigration courts' abilities to hear appeals.

In the courts in New York and California, nearly 40 percent of federal appeals involved immigration cases.

Last week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter revealed that the White House leaned on the New York Times not to run its article on warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency. The Times sat on the story for a year. Alter says,

We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

Howard Kurtz reports in today's Washington Post that White House officials, including John Negroponte and Porter Goss, met with Executive Publisher Leonard Downie and made a similar request over Dana Priest's article on secret CIA prisons. While Leonard Downie won't confirm the meetings, other sources do:

Here's a little song you can all join in on. Jane at Firedoglake reminds bloggers to give the gift of Christmas traffic: Click through each link and spread some blogger joy.

• Skippy writes a song, Blue Xanax
• Digby writes about the radioactive Muslims
• War and Piece gives no holiday break to the White House
• World O' Crap says Santa was a cokehead.
• Vodkapundit has an awesome picture of Colorado today.
• Athenae's ferrets are the best.
• Mike Ditto has some advice for the Harlem Choir, which is getting kicked out of its rehearsal space
• Heretik has moved, update your bookmarks.
• Public Defender Dude says Death Row Defender is worth reading. Law and Order, watch out.

Now I'm going to download Dear Mr. Fantasy, Paper Sun and the Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. We've made it through another Christmas. On to New Years.

The New York Times opines that Judge Sam Alito has an excessive zeal for presidential power.

[His] memos are part of a broader pattern of elevating the presidency above the other branches of government. In his judicial opinions, Judge Alito has shown a lack of respect for Congressional power - notably when he voted to strike down Congress's ban on machine guns as exceeding its constitutional authority. He has taken a cramped view of the Fourth Amendment and other constitutional provisions that limit executive power.

The Times urges Senators to ensure that Alito is on the side of the Constitution, not the President. Senator Leahy issued this statement Friday alerting Judge Alito that he would be questioned closely on his views about presidential power and checks and balances.

John Yoo is the Berkeley law professor, former associate White House counsel and former law clerk to Clarence Thomas, who is responsible for the most extreme White House positions on torture and snooping:

• It was Yoo who drafted the infamous memo saying the Geneva Conventions were "seriously flawed" and the U.S. wasn't bound by them in treating al Qaeda prisoners.

• It was Yoo who drafted the memo with this definition of torture:

...it declared that, to be considered torture, techniques must produce lasting psychological damage or suffering "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

• It was Yoo who said the President was not bound by FISA or federal eavesdropping laws when conducting electronic surveillance when one party was outside the United States. Yoo believes in wartime, the constitution gives the president unlimited power.

You can read his January 9 memo to William Haynes here. (pdf)

How did this 38 year old uber-conservative who has never met Bush or Cheney get to dictate our policy on torture and the war on terror? Mostly, it was fortuitous timing. The timing of the 9/11 attacks.

As former U.S. Pardon Attorney Margy Love says over at White Collar Crime Blog.

He has pardoned only 69 people in five years, about 7% of pardon applications acted on during this period, an absolute number and rate that is lower than any president in the past 100 years. It is curious to me (though not surprising) that elsewhere he presses the outer limits of constitutional powers that most regard as shared with the other branches, while appearing quite timid and uninspired where it comes to exercising the one power that is truly totally his own.

Love also notes that federal pardons are the only way to get rid of a federal criminal record. There is no expungement, and no administrative procedure for restoration of rights.

Because there is no other way under federal law that a person can avoid or mitigate the collateral consequences of conviction, federal offenders remain forever barred from many jobs and benefits and even civil rights, because of their conviction. I am not a particular fan of guns, but many would-be hunters remain permanently saddled with a disability that has absolutely nothing to do with their offense of conviction. Why should someone who cheated on their taxes not be able to shoot skeet?

Love characterizes Bush's use of his pardon power as "doing just enough to avoid being labeled stingy." I call it grinch-like.

A few weeks ago I wrote that John McCain's torture amendment, included in the defense authorization bill passed by Congress, would be severely undercut by the Levin-Graham-Kyl amendment, which grants a license to use coercive techniques, particularly on detainees at Guantanamo, by denying them access to the courts to seek redress. In other words, the McCain Amendment says one thing and the Levin-Graham-Kyl Amendment another.

The Washington Post today has more:

...the measure awaiting President Bush's signature also would limit the access of detainees held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to federal courts. And it would allow the military to use confessions elicited by torture when deciding whether a detainee is an enemy combatant.

Just go watch.

Share the link, and Happy Holidays to all.

by TChris

TalkLeft now joins the chorus of bloggers (many of them mentioned here) calling attention to this editorial in the conservative Barron’s. Think of it as a Christmas present:

The administration is saying the president has unlimited authority to order wiretaps in the pursuit of foreign terrorists, and that the Congress has no power to overrule him. … [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales last week declined to declassify relevant legal reviews made by the Department of Justice.

Perhaps they were researched in a Star Chamber? Putting the president above the Congress is an invitation to tyranny. The president has no powers except those specified in the Constitution and those enacted by law. …

The meme is spreading fast. I got it too. Here's my answers, and I pass it to Avedon Carol at Sideshow.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: health spa instructor, record store salesclerk , switchboard operator (all in college), lawyer

Four movies you could watch over and over: Who'll Stop the Rain, And Justice for All, Panic in Needle Park, The Wanderers

Four places you’ve lived: New Rochelle, NY; Cleveland, Ohio; Ann Arbor, MI, Denver.

Four TV shows you love to watch: Sex and the City, Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Commander in Chief

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Rio and the Amazon; Hong Kong, Bangkok and Phuket, Hawaii and Bora Bora; Italy, France, and London; Shanghai; Mexico and the Caribbean.

Four websites you visit daily: Atrios, Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, Firedoglake

Four of your favorite foods: Vietnamese pho, soft-shelled crabs, ny strip steaks, coffee gelato

Four places you’d rather be: New York Citry, London, Shanghai, the Golden Door

Feel free to take the test in the comments or pass them around your blog.

To get in the spirit of Christmas, here is a letter by Luis Ramirez in which he writes about his first day on Death Row. Luis was executed in Texas in October, 2005, and always professed his innocence.

What's In the Brown Paper Bag ?
By Luis Ramirez #999309

I'm about the share with you a story who's telling is long past due. It's a familiar story to most of you reading this from death row. And now it's one that all of you in "free world" may benefit from. This is the story of my first day on the row.

I came here in May of 1999. The exact date is something that I can't recall.

I do remember arriving in the afternoon . I was placed in a cell on H-20 wing over at the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Tx. A Tsunami of emotions and thoughts were going through my mind at the time. I remember the only things in the cell were a mattress, pillow, a couple of sheets, a pillow case, a roll of toilet paper, and a blanket ... I remember sitting there, utterly lost.

by TChris

In a decision that spanked Dover school board members who wanted to pretend that intelligent design is based on science, Judge John Jones III made clear his belief that some of the board members lied under oath.

In his opinion, Jones accused some of those who testified during the six-week trial in Harrisburg of lying, singling out former board members Alan Bonsell and William Buckingham, the leading proponents of the policy.

Those comments sparked the interest of a prosecutor, who intends to investigate the possibility that perjury was committed. Perjury can be a difficult charge to prove, but Judge Jones was persuaded that the board members were deliberately untruthful.