The Crossed Pond

Speaking of fascists, it is apparently now not only uncouth for a terrorism suspect to have counsel and a fair trial, it is, in fact, cause to bar the participating defense attorneys from government service.

What Holder could not possibly answer for today was the claim that his Justice Department ostensibly wants to help the terrorists. This is hardly a new trope. But today offered a new twist: Holder was called out for harboring just such terror-lovers as, well, himself. Grassley demanded that Holder explain the presence in the solicitor general’s office of Neal Katyal, who represented Osama Bin Laden’s driver at the Supreme Court. Grassley used a smear from the New York Post (penned by the writer who ridiculously claimed Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh believed “Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts”) to demand that Holder account for Jennifer Daskal as counsel in its National Security Division, who allegedly wants terrorists to have more time to write poetry. Grassley demanded that Holder produce a list of DoJ appointees who have ever acted as lawyers for terror detainees.

Then John Kyl, R-Ariz., read from an editorial suggesting that the reason these detainee trials have been so long delayed is all the “leftist lawyers” who stalled the military commissions by challenging them in the courts. Kyl noted many of those lawyers–including Holder–work for the Justice Department despite the fact that Holder’s firm, Covington & Burling, “volunteered its services to at least 18 of America’s enemies in lawsuits they brought against the American people.” Remember in 2006 when the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, Cully Stimson, had to resign his position at the Pentagon for urging U.S. corporations to boycott any law firm that defended terror suspects? Apparently those law firms are still un-American, and anyone associated with them should be barred from DoJ.