Summary: Holding Political Leadership Accountable Before the Law: Week of August 22

"In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy." Justice Louis Brandeis

4 New Items including:

• ACLU Report: Obama Continuing Bush-Era Torture Policies
• Center for Torture Accountability lists St. Thomas Professor  Delahunty as deserving probe

David Culver, ed., Evergreene Digest

Bob Englehart

Big Brother: Obama Demands Access to Internet Records, in Secret, and Without Court Review, Tom Burghardt, Global Research

• Internet users do not give up their privacy rights when they log on, and the FBI should not have the power to secretly demand that ISPs turn over constitutionally protected information about their users without a court order.
• ACLU Report: Obama Continuing Bush-Era Torture Policies

ACLU Report: Obama Continuing Bush-Era Torture Policies, Deborah Weinstein,  TruthOut.org, in AlterNet

• Fear of an unchecked, unaccountable government permeates the report, particularly in the section about targeted killings.
• On torture, U.S. must clean house

Other Countries Probing Bush-era Torture — Why Aren't We? Shashank Bengali, the McClatchy Newspapers, in Common Dreams
"That's part of why we're so concerned. The Obama administration, rather than investigate the abuses of the last eight years, has increasingly become an obstacle to accountability."

Center for Torture Accountability lists St. Thomas Professor Delahunty as deserving probe, The Center for Torture Accountability
Delahunty helps John Yoo write memos making legal case for suspending constitutional rights and protections