Gitmo gets rid of lawyers

The Justice Department has asked the federal appeals court charged with handling all appeals of (Guantanamo) detentions to limit lawyers to three visits with their clients; allow their correspondence with prisoners to be opened and read; and give government officials the power to deny the lawyers access to evidence. The military authorities at Guantanamo have developed a deep antagonism, tinged with paranoia, toward the lawyers – an attitude exemplified by the comments of former detention chief Cully Stimson, who suggested that the law firms sponsoring the pro bono work should be punished by their corporate clients. In fact, civilian lawyers have provided an invaluable service at Guantanamo. Their investigations have made clear that many of those held at Guantanamo are not dangerous terrorists but Afghans forced into cannon-fodder service by the Taliban, or Arabs who were swept up and sold by Pakistani bounty hunters to the CIA. The administration’s latest maneuver demonstrates anew why the legal system that Congress approved is shamefully inadequate.

– The Washington Post

Government’s education invasion

According to a recent report by The Boston Globe, the Department of Education is working with accrediting agencies to devise new accreditation rules that would push colleges to produce evidence proving that they are educating their students to a certain standard that could go into effect as early as 2008. But the government’s demand for greater college accountability ignores the purpose of accreditation: to ensure that institutions of higher learning meet a minimal standard, not to impose normative standards on what or how much students should learn. Furthermore, the government should not be in the business of creating a de facto ranking system for institutions of higher education. Pedagogical and curricular diversity in the nation’s institutions of higher learning is inherently a good thing. The government should be celebrating those differences, not trying to force everyone into the same mold.

– The Harvard Daily Crimson

A penny for your thoughts, a nickel for fiscal restraint

There is rare good news from the otherwise grim budget front. Majorities in both the House and Senate have voted to impose a pay-as-you-go rule, starting with the 2008 federal budget, which they plan to complete this spring. “”Pay-go,”” which was abandoned in 2002, is vital to restoring budget discipline. It would require Congress to pay for new spending on entitlements, like Medicare, either by raising taxes or cutting other entitlements. It would also require legislators to make up forgone revenue from new tax cuts by raising other taxes or cutting spending. In coming up with a final budget bill, Democrats and Republicans alike should embrace the House’s clean, tough approach to pay-go. That would ensure that any renewal of expiring tax cuts would be married to a realistic plan to pay for them, based on resources at hand rather than projections.

– The New York Times