Welcome to my archives. This is a long list of most of the commentaries and longer articles I have written since 1989; the hundreds of articles I wrote for the New York Times from 1980-1988 can be found via the SELECTED MEDIA OUTLETS box. They are sorted by date, with the most recent posts first. If you want to find something specific, I would encourage you to use the search feature in the sidebar. It is powered by Google. It is fast and accurate.
Opening Argument – Congress Should Censure Gonzales
by Stuart Taylor, Jr.
What’s Congress to do when the president insists on keeping an attorney general who is so manifestly unequal to the demands of his job and so incapable of giving accurate answers to simple questions that even the president’s partisans want him out?
Impeaching Alberto Gonzales, as some are starting to suggest, would be overkill. It would make no sense to put the nation through the agony of an impeachment trial to get rid of one ineffectual, hopelessly uninformed presidential lapdog. But this does not mean that members are powerless to do anything beyond groaning at a Bush spokeswoman’s fantastic claim that Gonzales is "doing a fantastic job" and looking for reasons to skip town to avoid the next installment of his cloddish testimony.
The House or Senate — or, better, both — should adopt a resolution censuring Gonzales, or (as Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has suggested) stating its lack of confidence in him.
Although unusual, a vote censuring an executive branch official would be both constitutional and supported by precedent. To be sure, the Republican House leadership argued in December 1998 that it would be unconstitutional to take a floor vote censuring President Clinton. But this was just a pretext for a politically driven determination to deny moderate Republicans any less-drastic alternative to voting for impeachment.
Terrorism Suspects and the Law
by Stuart Taylor, Jr
What should our government do when it captures a noncitizen suspected of being an Islamist terrorist?
Under the Bush administration’s approach, partly ratified by Congress, such people can be imprisoned indefinitely, perhaps for life, without ever seeing a judge or jury, based on slapdash military hearings with no defense lawyers, no real opportunity to confront the evidence against them—which can be obtained through coercive interrogation—and all-too-cursory judicial review. Some detainees have also been subjected to years of interrogation, including techniques so brutal as to meet many definitions of torture—and, in a few cases, to cause death.
By contrast, under the approach demanded by some human-rights groups, even a captive who is undoubtedly a mass-murdering terrorist must be freed unless the government can prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in an ordinary criminal trial. If the proof would publicly expose secrets so sensitive as to endanger the lives of intelligence sources, that would be the government’s problem. Nor could terrorist masterminds be subjected to even mild discomfort by interrogators seeking to extract life-saving information.
The gulf between these two approaches illustrates the polarization of our political and legal debate on the handling of terrorism suspects. No satisfactory resolution seems likely until at least 2009. Then, perhaps, we may have a new president willing to heed the advice of the more moderate-spirited experts (some named below) who have been thinking through the challenges posed by the hundreds of suspects now held by the military and others who may be captured in the future.
“Issue Ads” and Common Sense
by Stuart Taylor, Jr
Eight Supreme Court justices spent an hour on April 25 arguing with three lawyers and one another about the constitutionality of the federal regulation governing political advertising by nonprofit advocacy corporations. But all nine justices and all three lawyers missed what, I respectfully submit, should be the point of the case. They should be focusing on how Congress rigged the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law to protect its own members from criticism by their constituents.
In a nutshell, the problem with the Court’s approach to the 2002 law’s ban on so-called sham issue ads by nonprofit advocacy corporations is that the justices are focusing on the word "corporations" when they should be focusing on "nonprofit."
A typical issue ad might say something like "tell Senator Jones to stop filibustering judicial nominees," or "tell Senator Jones to vote for reproductive choice." Groups paying to air such ads almost always want the targeted lawmaker to vote as urged or to be defeated in the next election—or both. Seeking to determine which purpose predominates—the focus of the current debate—is a mug’s game.
McCain-Feingold’s ban on such issue ads has been touted as necessary to keep big, bad corporations and labor unions from pouring money into election campaigns. Corporations and unions have long been banned from doing this directly, through contributions to candidates, and should not be allowed to do it indirectly either, the argument goes.
So far, so good. It would distort the democratic process to allow Fortune 500 CEOs and union bosses to spend large sums of stockholders’ and members’ money to support candidates whom the stockholders and members might not choose to support. There is no First Amendment right to spend someone else’s money on electioneering ads.
“Hate Crimes” and Double Standards
by Stuart Taylor, Jr
Consider three criminal cases.
No. 1: Christopher Newsom and his girlfriend, Channon Christian, both students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, were carjacked while on a dinner date in January, repeatedly raped (both of them), tortured, and killed. His burned body was found near a railroad track. Hers was stuffed into a trash can. Five suspects have been charged. The crimes were interracial.
No. 2: Three white Duke lacrosse players were accused in March 2006 of beating, kicking, choking, and gang-raping an African-American stripper, while pelting her with racial epithets, during a team party.
No. 3: Sam Hays bumped against Mike Martin in a crowded bar, spilling beer on Martin’s "gay pride" sweatshirt. Martin yelled, "You stupid bastard, I should kick your ass." Hays muttered, "You damned queer" and threw a punch, bloodying Martin’s lip.
Now the quiz.
Which of these would qualify as a federal case under a House-passed bill—widely acclaimed by editorial writers, liberal interest groups, law enforcement officials, and many others—expanding federal jurisdiction to prosecute "hate crimes"?
Bonus question: Why have the interracial rape-torture-murders in Knoxville been completely ignored by the same national media that clamor for more laws to stop hate crimes—the same media that erupted in a guilt-presuming feeding frenzy for months over the far less serious Duke lacrosse charges, which were full of glaring holes from the start and turned out to be fraudulent?
The answers.
The interracial Knoxville rape-murders would probably not qualify as hate crimes. The reason is that although the murderers were obviously full of hate, it cannot be proven that they hated their victims because of race. (Or so say police.)
Congress Should Censure Gonzales
by Stuart Taylor, Jr
What’s Congress to do when the president insists on keeping an attorney general who is so manifestly unequal to the demands of his job and so incapable of giving accurate answers to simple questions that even the president’s partisans want him out?
Impeaching Alberto Gonzales, as some are starting to suggest, would be overkill. It would make no sense to put the nation through the agony of an impeachment trial to get rid of one ineffectual, hopelessly uninformed presidential lapdog. But this does not mean that members are powerless to do anything beyond groaning at a Bush spokeswoman’s fantastic claim that Gonzales is “doing a fantastic job” and looking for reasons to skip town to avoid the next installment of his cloddish testimony.
The House or Senate—or, better, both—should adopt a resolution censuring Gonzales, or (as Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has suggested) stating its lack of confidence in him.
Although unusual, a vote censuring an executive branch official would be both constitutional and supported by precedent. To be sure, the Republican House leadership argued in December 1998 that it would be unconstitutional to take a floor vote censuring President Clinton. But this was just a pretext for a politically driven determination to deny moderate Republicans any less-drastic alternative to voting for impeachment.
Opening Argument – ‘Issue Ads’ and Common Sense
by Stuart Taylor, Jr.
Eight Supreme Court justices spent an hour on April 25 arguing with three lawyers and one another about the constitutionality of the federal regulation governing political advertising by nonprofit advocacy corporations. But all nine justices and all three lawyers missed what, I respectfully submit, should be the point of the case. They should be focusing on how Congress rigged the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law to protect its own members from criticism by their constituents.
In a nutshell, the problem with the Court’s approach to the 2002 law’s ban on so-called sham issue ads by nonprofit advocacy corporations is that the justices are focusing on the word "corporations" when they should be focusing on "nonprofit."
A typical issue ad might say something like "tell Senator Jones to stop filibustering judicial nominees," or "tell Senator Jones to vote for reproductive choice." Groups paying to air such ads almost always want the targeted lawmaker to vote as urged or to be defeated in the next election — or both. Seeking to determine which purpose predominates — the focus of the current debate — is a mug’s game.
McCain-Feingold’s ban on such issue ads has been touted as necessary to keep big, bad corporations and labor unions from pouring money into election campaigns. Corporations and unions have long been banned from doing this directly, through contributions to candidates, and should not be allowed to do it indirectly either, the argument goes.
So far, so good. It would distort the democratic process to allow Fortune 500 CEOs and union bosses to spend large sums of stockholders’ and members’ money to support candidates whom the stockholders and members might not choose to support. There is no First Amendment right to spend someone else’s money on electioneering ads.
An Unbelievable Day
by Stuart Taylor, Jr.
It was an extraordinary event in American legal history. Duke lacrosse teammates Dave Evans, Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty knew that North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper was going to drop the sensational sexual assault case against them. But how would Cooper explain it? Would he just say that the charges were not provable beyond a reasonable doubt-which some saw as the safest way out for the attorney general politically-and leave their reputations in limbo? Or would he say the word
It was an extraordinary event in American legal history.Â
Duke lacrosse teammates Dave Evans, Reade Seligmann and Colin Finnerty knew that North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper was going to drop the sensational sexual assault case against them. But how would Cooper explain it? Would he just say that the charges were not provable beyond a reasonable doubt-which some saw as the safest way out for the attorney general politically-and leave their reputations in limbo? Or would he say the word they were waiting for?
Six paragraphs into his statement, Cooper ended their agony: "We believe these three individuals are innocent of these charges." Innocent. Watching on TV, the defendants and their parents, teammates and friends burst into cheers.
Cooper did not stop there. "We have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night," he said. "The eyewitness identification procedu…
Opening Argument – ‘Rape’ and the Navy’s P.C. Police
by Stuart Taylor, Jr.
This is a story about a 23-year-old African-American midshipman who has limitless potential to serve his country but now faces a grave risk of seeing his Navy career derailed because of a bogus rape charge by a white woman whose violations of Navy rules were worse than his.
Lamar Owens Jr., the star quarterback, captain, and MVP of the Navy football team through the 2005 season, was resoundingly acquitted of rape last July 20, after the evidence presented to a military jury of five naval officers showed clearly that his sexual encounter with a female midshipman six months before was consensual and that the rape prosecution was a travesty.
More broadly, this is a story about how overreaction to the bad old days when real rape victims were not taken seriously has fostered a politically correct presumption of guilt in many rape cases, leading to wrongful prosecutions of innocent men and, probably, the convictions of some.
In the now-infamous Duke lacrosse rape fraud, the falsely accused men are white, the lying accuser is black, and racial demagoguery has fueled the prosecution. In other cases, such as that of Lamar Owens, the races have been reversed and suspicions of racially selective prosecution muted. In most, the men and women have been of the same race.
Owens endured a court-martial that should never have been convened, in the face of powerful evidence of innocence, thanks to the "leadership" of the Naval Academy’s superintendent, Vice Adm. Rodney Rempt. He has led a much-publicized crackdown on sexual assault and harassment, but has badly overshot the mark.
Under Fire
by Stuart Taylor, Jr
This is not a prediction that Alberto R. Gonzales will be driven from office because of the incompetence and untruthfulness recently manifested by the botched firings of eight U.S. attorneys and the multiple misleading and inconsistent explanations thereof. Even if President Bush's buddy hangs on until 2009, the Senate should henceforth reject any attorney general nominee whose only outstanding qualification is his or her relationship with the president. Democrats who want to run Gonzales out of town should also pledge that they will never again support a nominee of either party who is as ill-qualified as Gonzales is or – for that matter – as Robert F. Kennedy was in 1961.
Hindsight shows that RFK turned out to be a pretty good AG in many ways. (Approving FBI wiretaps of Martin Luther King Jr. was not among his better ideas.) But as of 1961, his main qualification was that he was the president's brother.
The Justice Department, which employs 110,000 people, is entrusted with advising the president and other federal officials on the limits of their powers; safeguarding our civil liberties; evenhandedly enforcing laws on terrorism, national security, civil rights, the environment, white-collar crime, antitrust and narcotics; choosing judges; and running the FBI and the federal prison system.
Its prosecutors have “more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in America,” as then-Attorney General (and later Justice) Robert Jackson said in a famous 1940 speech to an assembly of U.S. attorneys.
“Rape” and the Navy’s P.C. Police
by Stuart Taylor, Jr
This is a story about a 23-year-old African-American midshipman who has limitless potential to serve his country but now faces a grave risk of seeing his Navy career derailed because of a bogus rape charge by a white woman whose violations of Navy rules were worse than his.
Lamar Owens Jr., the star quarterback, captain, and MVP of the Navy football team through the 2005 season, was resoundingly acquitted of rape last July 20, after the evidence presented to a military jury of five naval officers showed clearly that his sexual encounter with a female midshipman six months before was consensual and that the rape prosecution was a travesty.
More broadly, this is a story about how overreaction to the bad old days when real rape victims were not taken seriously has fostered a politically correct presumption of guilt in many rape cases, leading to wrongful prosecutions of innocent men and, probably, the convictions of some.
In the now-infamous Duke lacrosse rape fraud, the falsely accused men are white, the lying accuser is black, and racial demagoguery has fueled the prosecution. In other cases, such as that of Lamar Owens, the races have been reversed and suspicions of racially selective prosecution muted. In most, the men and women have been of the same race.
Owens endured a court-martial that should never have been convened, in the face of powerful evidence of innocence, thanks to the "leadership" of the Naval Academy’s superintendent, Vice Adm. Rodney Rempt. He has led a much-publicized crackdown on sexual assault and harassment, but has badly overshot the mark.