Afghan Official Accused of Pecking With Impunity

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he's not intervening for now in the controversial case of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter and journalism student who was sentenced to death by a three-judge panel two weeks ago for blasphemy. Kambakhsh had handed classmates a report, perhaps a satire, he found on the Internet that questioned why Muslim men are allowed to have four spouses but women don't have the same right.

After a five-minute trial with no lawyer, Kambakhsh was given a piece of paper saying he had acted against Islam and should be executed, according to his brother.

The case has sparked an international outcry, with human rights and news organizations condemning the arrest and sentence. Demonstrators in Kabul have demanded that the sentence be overturned. Lawmakers have been split.

The press groups, greatly aided by the blogosphere, are playing hardball. A Kabul Press editorial on Jan. 30 noted that Afghanistan's Senate supported the death sentence and noted Washington Post photos of the vice president of that chamber, Sayed Hamed Gailani, kissing first lady Laura Bush's hand at the State of the Union address in 2006.

"Kissing the hand of a woman is also a crime in Islamic law," the editorial said. "Shouldn't Hamed Gailani be arrested and tried?"

Well, our photos prove only intent to smooch. Could have been one of those "air kisses."

In any event, the Afghan Senate by the end of the week withdrew its support for the death sentence, noted its backing of defendants' rights to counsel (not unlike, for example, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335) and to appeals, and said the earlier statement of support was a "technical mistake."

Meanwhile, Karzai is waiting for the courts to sort things out.

More Victims of Climate Change

There seems to be a growing consensus on the dangers of climate change, ice caps melting and so on. But not everyone sees the same kind of peril.

We just got a sharp warning on the risks of legislation on climate change from Patton Boggs, the powerhouse law firm/lobbying operation.

"Despite the considerable challenges confronting Congress as it attempts to pass a climate change bill that President Bush would sign," the firm's January Energy Alert newsletter tells us, "producers and heavy users of fossil fuels should remain very concerned."

"We cannot overstate the potential for disruption to the energy sector from climate change legislation," the newsletter says. ". . . One obvious and highly predictable result . . . will be a massive fuel switch from high greenhouse gas emitting fuel sources (e.g., coal) to low emitting fuel sources (e.g., natural gas and renewables)."

There will be "winners and losers" from the pending "cap and trade" proposals, the firm tells us, and "legislators and regulators, not the invisible hand of the market," will decide.

Remember, the newsletter says, "if you're not at the table, you're on the menu."

Yikes!

Maybe Because of the Muckraking?

You don't call, you don't write . . .

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey wanders up tomorrow to his favorite venue, the House Judiciary Committee, to chat. To speed things along, Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) sent him a note Friday reminding him to get his testimony to the committee "no later than the close of business" today and to respond to seven different letters going back to May, including four last month.

Conyers said the committee is still concerned about politicization of the Justice Department, waterboarding and torture, selective prosecution, the investigation into the destruction of the CIA tapes, and civil rights.

But he also wants to know why the Web site TPMMuckraker, "which played an important role in providing information" about the "U.S. attorney scandal," says it has "been removed from the department's press release e-mail distribution list."

Conyers said he'd like to know "who made this decision and why."

Hey! It's not everyone who gets removed from the list. Congrats.

No Treaty, No Law, No Problem

Speaking of torture, the committee will no doubt keep pounding on Mukasey about whether waterboarding is torture. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell recently mused to the New Yorker that "whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture."

McConnell said the legal test for torture should be "pretty simple: Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?"

Now, waterboarding is one thing, but it could be worse. We recall this great exchange two years ago between Notre Dame law professor Douglass Cassel and Berkeley law professor John Yoo, a former Justice Department official and author of the famous torture memo.

"If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" Cassel asked during an "off the record" debate before some 200 people at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

"No treaty," said Yoo, who's married to journalist Peter Arnett's daughter.

"Also no law by Congress," Cassel said. "That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo" on torture.

"I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that," Yoo explained.

(Note to students in Yoo's course: Do not even think about cutting class.)

D'Amato Announces Super Baby

As the polls opened yesterday morning, the first news was that former New York Republican senator and longtime Loop favorite Alfonse D'Amato, 70, reported that his wife, Katuria, 42, gave birth to their first son, Alfonse Marcello D'Amato.

D'Amato, a gift to journalism, left the Senate in 1999. He switched his support in this year's race to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after former senator Fred Thompson (Tenn.) dropped out.

D'Amato's office released a statement that "Baby Alfonse was born at North Shore LIJ Hospital in Manhasset at 7:47 am weighing 5 lbs and 14.5 ozs. Both mother and son are doing fantastic."

"Not only was baby D'Amato born on Super Tuesday (and Fat Tuesday!), but the Senator was quick to note that the time the baby was born, 7:47 am, coincides with the 747 airplane. Katuria's mother worked at Boeing in Seattle for several years and Katuria sits on the board of the American Airpower Museum! They sure delivered a rocket."

The couple married in 2004.

Congress Getting FY 2009 Doorstops After All

There had been building anxiety on Capitol Hill over the Office of Management and Budget's announcement that the agency would no longer provide copies of the 2,000-plus-page FY 2009 budget to Congress. The Hill had reported that OMB chief Jim Nussle, a former House member himself, said members could look at the budget online or buy copies from the Government Printing Office.

Not to worry, Rep. Robert A. Brady (D-Pa.), who chairs the House Administration Committee, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who heads the Senate's Rules and Administration Committee, wrote members last week.

"Useful as it is, on-line access to a multi-volume . . . document cannot provide members and staff with the same degree of functionality as the printed version," the duo explained, pretending that members of Congress actually read so much as a page of the document or that staffers read anything more than sections of it.

So the Government Printing Office will deliver copies to congressional offices, at no charge to office accounts, Brady and Feinstein said.