Ellis Washington

Truth is the best defense.

Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick Cheney, Bush-43’s VP, is an unapologetic conservative and cofounder of the advocacy group “Keep America Safe.” She has created a recent controversy with liberals and RINOs across America who are feigning outrage at an ad Liz Cheney’s organization aired that used the phrase “The al-Qaida 7″ – an unflattering epithet implying that seven of the nine Department of Justice lawyers recently appointed by Attorney General Eric Holder have ties to the defense of known Muslim terrorists.

The central question regarding the al-Qaida 7 is not whether it is permissible or even expedient for DOJ lawyers to represent the obviously guilty, because under our system of laws, criminals are entitled to counsel, but why did they do it? If they were motivated by empathy for the terrorists, then Liz Cheney is right for stating this fact. However, if they are strict constitutionalists and desire protection of our constitutional principles and were motivated by legal principle, then Cheney is wrong.

In response to Liz Cheney’s attacks against the al-Qaida 7 earlier this week, a group of 19 former top officials of the Bush Justice Department signed a declaration defending DOJ policy, including: Larry Thompson (deputy attorney
general, Bush-43), Peter Keisler (acting attorney general, Bush-41), Matthew Waxman, Charles “Cully” Stimson (deputy assistant secretary of defense, Bush-43), Brandford Berenson and Daniel Dell’Orto (White House counsel, Bush-41).

Other DOJ sympathizers included John Bellinger III, a former legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and currently a partner at the law firm of Arnold and Porter, who said regarding Liz Cheney’s criticism of DOJ: “We’ve had a long-standing tradition in our country for lawyers to represent unpopular causes, and they shouldn’t be attacked for doing so.” Ken Starr, current dean of Pepperdine Law School, former solicitor general and special prosecutor during the infamous Clinton-Lewinsky sexual harassment scandal of the 1990s, said: “You do not impute the causes of the client to the lawyer who is called upon to make sure that that client’s rights are being protected.”

Really, Dean Starr? Where is that idea found in the Constitution?

Their GOP credentials notwithstanding, it appears that these lawyers, who I’ll call “the DOJ 19″ all signed that document defending Holder and seem to hold a biased view against America’s original intent of the constitutional framers founded in natural-law jurisprudence. Instead these careerists are zealously defending existential DOJ bureaucracy, centralized big government and the rights of the guilty above the rights of the innocent.

The DOJ 19 defend terrorist-sympathizer Eric Holder and the al-Qaida 7, who have time to do pro bono work for Muslim terrorists – but how much time have they given to defend vilified American heroes like: Michael McCabe, Julio Huertas and Jonathan Keefe who caught Ahmed Hashim Abed, plotter of the murder of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004? The bodies of the four Americans were burned and hanged from a bridge while Iraqis cheered on in jubilation.

The Liz Cheney controversy brings up deeper constitutional issues of natural law, original intent and the personal guarantees the constitutional framers codified in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

For too long society has given self-aggrandizing lawyers and the American Bar Association the moral high ground to represent irredeemable characters of the vilest ilk in the name of the Constitution, but these new traditions, like the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of an attorney, did not include the right for “We the People” to provide an attorney for these unrepentant terrorists at taxpayers expense until 1963.

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) is a landmark case in United States Supreme Court history. In this case, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state courts are required under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution to provide counsel in criminal cases for defendants who are unable to afford their own attorneys. Allowing a defendant an attorney and paying for a defendant to have an attorney are two very different philosophies of jurisprudence.

The Obama administration is seemingly hell-bent on “fundamentally transforming America” as the president has stated on many occasions. One way to achieve his socialist revolution is by deconstructing all of America’s fundamental institutions. Giving constitutional rights to avowed Muslim terrorists is merely a means to Obama’s diabolical ends to purposely destabilize American society, thus setting the pretext to eventually create a one-party oligarchy.

Remember the words of chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, which were repeated by both Obama and Hillary Clinton: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.

George Orwell said, “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Indeed, during the Age of Obama lying and Machiavellian tactics have been elevated to an art form where a scoundrel like Holder, the al-Qaida 7 and Obama can hold positions of great power, are protected, even celebrated by the state-controlled media and defended by the DOJ 19, while those same media hacks vilify two bona fide American patriots like Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz, who are merely telling America the truth about Holder.

Finally, calling Liz Cheney’s commercial about the al-Qaida 7 “McCarthyism” is merely reflexive liberal groupspeak, which conservatives sometimes are beguiled to engage in to curry favor from liberals. For example, conservative author, attorney and Claremont Institute fellow Paul Mirengoff recently said that the ad “could be worse than some of the assertions made by [Sen. Joe] McCarthy.”

The truth is McCarthyism is no longer McCarthyism. History has vindicated Sen. Joe McCarthy’s singular yeoman efforts to expose communists, communist sympathizers, Hollywood socialists and American spies in the early 1950s based on the recently declassified Venona cables, decrypted World War II Soviet messages, yet lesser men of all ideological stripes continue to vilify Sen. Joe McCarthy, one of the greatest American heroes of the 20th century.

Indeed, the al-Qaida 7 had the right to represent Muslim terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, and We the People have the right to know why they did it – truth is the best defense.

Give ‘em hell, Liz Cheney! For the real conservatives out here realize that you are defending the ideals of the Founding Fathers, our liberties and America, the country we all love.

The Chinese communist (and really, I can’t emphasize that enough, though I certainly tried) government vows not to turn their U.S. debt holdings into a political football. Should they be trusted? Or are they just following the philosophy of the great Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu who wrote that all warfare, including economic, is based on deception:

All warfare is based on deception.

Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.

In other words, are the Chinese trying to deceive us? I say yes.

George Washington University Professor Dennis Johnson gives a brief history of the evolution of political consultants/strategists and campaign management.

Justice Samuel Alito wasn’t the only Supreme Court member to take umbrage with President Obama’s dsplat of willful and utter disregard for decorum at this year’s State of the Union (SOTU). Chief Justice John Roberts is calling out President Obama’s and congressional Democrats’ unprofessional behavior at SOTU:

Responding to a University of Alabama law student’s question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.

“So I have no problems with that,” he said. “On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum.

“The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.”

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. This is outstanding. Apparently Chief Justice Roberts has more political backbone than Republican congressional leadership.

Chief Justice Roberts went on to make a larger, more important point stating that the SOTU has degenerated to a political pep rally. He is exactly right. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of turning the SOTU into a political pep rally. That’s not what the Founders inteded the SOTU to be.

Let me direct your attention to Article II, Section 3 of The Constitution of the United States:

He [the President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; (My emphasis)

The State of the Union is supposed to be informative and advisory, not serve as a forum for political bullying.

When are we going to get back to serious debate in this country? Or are we destined to remain in a political climate of punchlines and soundbites?

On this week’s edition of The Report from Washington, Ellis Washington discusses his latest column, When killer whales kill: A Biblical view, and the public’s growing disapproval of President Obama’s health care plan.