Alright. I was planning to take a few weeks off this whole blogging thing and just focus on finals. But then an article like this comes along and I simply cannot resist pointing it out. Oh boy.

The Justice Department- who is obviously completely out of the spotlight at the moment- is asking a federal court to limit basic attorney priveleges in the case of Guantanamo detainees. What kind of privileges would they give up?

"Under the proposal, filed this month in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the government would limit lawyers to three visits with an existing client at Guantánamo; there is now no limit. It would permit only a single visit with a detainee to have him authorize a lawyer to handle his case. And it would permit a team of intelligence officers and military lawyers not involved in a detainee’s case to read mail sent to him by his lawyer.
The proposal would also reverse existing rules to permit government officials, on their own, to deny the lawyers access to secret evidence used by military panels to determine that their clients were enemy combatants.
Many of the lawyers say the restrictions would make it impossible to represent their clients, or even to convince wary detainees — in a single visit — that they were really lawyers, rather than interrogators."

Wow. So, limit access to clients, their evidence, and violate attorney client privilege. For people that are already being held without charges in a secret prison that uses illegal interrogation techniques. Does that about sum it up? Oh, right... this request is being brought by a Department that is under investigation for massive corruption. Wow.

Its hard to think of a strong enough commendation of this latest DOJ action... so let me just say... um... I think that this is bad.

Court asked to Limit Lawyers at Guantanamo