May, 21 2009, 04:29pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Obama Violating Constitution on Detainees Plan?
WASHINGTON
MICHAEL RATNER, via Jen Nessel
SHAYANA KADIDAL, Alison Roh Park
The president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Ratner said today in response to Obama's speech at the National Archives: "The president wrapped himself in the Constitution and then proceeded to violate it by announcing he would send people before irredeemably flawed military commissions and creating a preventive detention scheme that only serves to move Guantanamo to a new location and give it a new name." Ratner wrote the book The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld.
The managing attorney for CCR's Guantanamo project, Kadidal said today: "Preventive detention goes against every principle our nation was founded on. We have courts and laws in place that we respect and rely on because we have been a nation of laws for hundreds of years; we should not simply discard them when they are inconvenient. The new president is looking a lot like the old."
More Information
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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