by hmm » Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:24 am
Its those damned terrorists again and their lawyers, why do they hate fascism?<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/28/AR2006032801685.html">www.washingtonpost.com/wp...01685.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Record Shows Senators' 'Debate' That Wasn't</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>By Dan Eggen<br>Washington Post Staff Writer<br>Wednesday, March 29, 2006; Page A06<br><br>According to the official Congressional Record of Dec. 21, 2005, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) held a long conversation on the Senate floor about an amendment bearing Graham's name that restricts the legal rights of detainees in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.<br><br>"I agree entirely," Graham responds to Kyl at one point. "I have just been handed a memorandum on this subject," Kyl says later. Another Republican senator, Sam Brownback of Kansas, interrupts the two with his own commentary.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>But those exchanges never occurred.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> Instead, the debate -- which runs 15 pages and brims with conversational flourishes -- was inserted into the Congressional Record minutes before the Senate gave final approval to the legislation.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>In legal briefs to the Supreme Court</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, which took up the issue yesterday, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>the Justice Department cites the material as evidence</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--> that Congress intended the Detainee Treatment Act to retroactively invalidate pending legal challenges by hundreds of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Graham and Kyl submitted a friend-of-the-court brief asserting the same thing.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>~snip~<br><br>The inserted floor debate, known in Senate parlance as a "colloquy," has since become an intriguing side <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>issue in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->, Osama bin Laden's former driver, whose case was at issue before the court yesterday.<br><br>~snip~<br><br>The briefs filed in support of the government do not make clear that the Graham-Kyl debate was manufactured. In their friend-of-the-court brief, filed in February, Graham and Kyl note that the "Congressional Record is presumed to reflect live debate except when the statements therein are followed by a bullet . . . or are underlined."<br><br>The Graham-Kyl exchange is not marked in either way, <!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>although a C-SPAN recording and other records make clear that the discussion never happened.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>~snip~<br><br>"<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>This colloquy is critical to the government's legislative history argument, and it's entirely manufactured and misrepresented to the court as having occurred live on the Senate floor before a crucial vote</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END-->," Remes said.<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
