Obama nominee Kagan has embraced expanded executive authority

Solicitor General Elena Kagan will be President Obama’s second Supreme Court nominee. The emerging conventional wisdom is that Kagan, a rare nominee for the high court who hasn’t been a judge, is a very smart blank slate. On at least one category of issues that Kagan will face — the intersection of national security and law during a time of war — that conventional wisdom looks correct. But there’s a proxy for that set of issues, however inexact, that offers a few clues in advance of her confirmation hearings: Kagan’s deference to executive power.

A Gitmo Camp Delta photo notebook

President Obama is more than four months past the deadline he set to shutter the internationally infamous Camp Delta War on Terror prison and interrogation facility here. Approximately 180 detainees remain behind the wire and within the walls of the seven camps of the prison. They have been here for years and most have never been charged with a crime or wartime offense. Attorneys representing Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen imprisoned here as a teenager in 2002 and one of the few charged with a crime–murder and material support for terrorism– will argue at a pre-trial hearing tomorrow that coerced testimony should be banned from his military commission trial.

Obama-era Guantanamo Bay: ‘Bush with a smile’

Adam Serwer, fresh from a trip to Guantanamo Bay to see a proceeding in an Obama-era military commission, draws some conclusions about the administration’s national security approach:

The detention camps have become more bearable for the detainees, with 85

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Will Gitmo terrorists bring extra funding for federal prisons?

Erin Rosa at her fab new immigration blog, Gabacha.com, makes a very prescient point riding under the radar in the political pundit gabbing about transferring Guantanámo detainees to federal Supermax prisons.

While the guards are up to the task and are confident in their abilities to get the job done, there also needs to be additional funding to the facility in order the guarantee the safety of not only the workers, but also the inmates that would be transferred there.

Alberto Gonzales: I’ll Cooperate with Leahy Truth Commission

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared at a forum on Republicans and the Hispanic vote at the Capitol Hill Club this morning, getting a standing ovation from the crowd when he was pointed out by the moderator. As Gonzales left, I asked him whether he would participate in a “truth commission,” as proposed by Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), to look into alleged law-breaking by the Bush administration.

Ritter responds to GOP on Gitmo: ‘They’re just making stuff up’

Gov. Bill Ritter’s office pulled no punches Tuesday morning responding to a report that the communication arm of the Colorado Senate Minority Office edited a radio interview to make it seem as though Ritter had changed his position on housing Guantanamo detainees in Colorado. “They’re just making stuff up,” Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer wrote in an e-mail to the Colorado Independent. “Nothing new for them, though.”

Senate Minority Office ‘applauds’ mangled quote from Ritter on Gitmo

ColoradoSenateNews.com is at it again. The partisan communications operation of the Republican Colorado Senate Minority office issued a gleeful press release Monday applauding “Ritter’s change of tune on Gitmo detainees.”

The release includes an audio clip that appears to represent Gov. Bill Ritter suggesting Guantanamo Bay prisoners should be sent to Pakistan rather than housed at the Supermax federal detention facility in Florence. Except that’s not what Ritter said on a radio broadcast Monday morning, and the audio clip included on the ColoradoSenateNews site — while presenting itself as a seamless statement from Ritter — edits out a lengthy discussion that narrows the topic considerably while also criticizing the Bush administration for bungling the cases against many of the Gitmo detainees.

Colorado ACLU: Supermax move for Gitmo detainees would mock justice

Politicians in Colorado are split over the chance detainees from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, could be imprisoned at the Supermax federal detention facility in Florence — some say Supermax can handle Gitmo suspects just fine, others warn it’s too dangerous. But the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado said in a statement to the Colorado Independent Friday afternoon that moving Gitmo detainees — including many only suspected of crimes — to the country’s most secure prison “is simply another form of torture, one which makes a mockery of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ “

NIMBY cries greet prospects Gitmo detainees could be moved to Colorado

While civil libertarians and former CIA agents cheered news President Barack Obama plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, some Colorado politicians are crying foul at the prospect detainees could be shipped to the federal Supermax prison in Florence.

Ex-CIA official: Torture ban a ‘great leap forward’

Some important analysis from our Washington Independent colleague national security reporter Spencer Ackerman.

President Barack Obama took a major step toward undoing the interrogation and detention policies of the Bush administration on Thursday, issuing four executive orders that lay out an unequivocal path to closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, constructing a new legal and policy architecture for terrorism detainees, and ending the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” regime.

Both civil libertarians and ex-CIA officials involved in interrogations and detentions policies hailed the changes.