Word: legalism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...LEGAL LIMBO With the girl in question yet to be identified and her alleged abuser found living in a different state, lawyers for the sect--which is led by jailed polygamist Warren Jeffs--have moved to stop the search on constitutional grounds. The children are currently in foster care...
...McCain has long argued that the Bush Administration overstepped its legal authority by approving techniques like waterboarding, and has successfully championed two efforts to try to limit the White House to the plain language of international treaties, which ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. McCain has also spoken in opposition to other techniques in the CIA arsenal like sleep deprivation and the use of stress positions, both of which were employed by the North Vietnamese during McCain's captivity as a prisoner of war and may still be employed...
...McCain senior adviser Mark Salter said the candidate continues to monitor whether the techniques employed by the CIA officials pass legal muster. "If McCain has reason to believe that they have crossed the line, he will litigate that," Salter said, explaining that the Senator might discuss these concerns publicly or privately. "McCain communicates his view directly to the people doing it," Salter added, in reference to interrogation procedures...
...understand the complexities of McCain's position, it is first important to understand the legal game of hide and seek that the torture debate has become. Long before Bush Administration legal memoranda made techniques like waterboarding permissible for CIA detainees, many in Congress and the legal community assumed such methods were illegal under international agreements and U.S. criminal law. "There really wasn't any ambiguity in terms of waterboarding," explains Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School...
...since September 11, 2001, the legal waters have been muddied by repeated attempts by the Bush Administration to further define the meaning of the law. According to statements by CIA director Michael Hayden, three detainees in U.S. custody have been waterboarded. To permit these and other techniques, the White House and the Justice Department developed new definitions for terms like "torture" and "detainee" and expanded theories about the power of the President to override congressional oversight in time of war. A 2003 memo by John Yoo, a former Justice Department official, which was declassified last week, went...