Subject: re: U.S. Says It Told Qatar Not to Pay a Ransom

         

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 8:52 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Says It Told Qatar Not to Pay a Ransom
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

   I find no comfort in government assurances "that it told the Qataris not to pay a ransom for [Peter Theo Curtis]".  It smells of the same lawyerly evasions we were fed when we bought Raymond Davis out of a Pakistani jail. Is this one likewise a CIA hit-man, masquerading as a journalist this time, rather than as a diplomat? 

   The world will be a safer place when our government and any potential kidnappers understand the lesson of "Captain Phillips".  Taking an American hostage should get you a bullet in the head, and not a bag of cash.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/middleeast/us-says-it-told-qatar-not-to-pay-a-ransom.html?_r=0

Subject: re; Before Killing James Foley, ISIS Demanded Ransom From U.S.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 9:03 AM
Subject: re; Before Killing James Foley, ISIS Demanded Ransom From U.S.
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   With one hand, France continues to sell Mistral-class warships to Russia while Russia murders hundreds of Dutch citizens, and with the other provides (with the Spanish) "the main source of revenue for al-Qaeda. The French have their own elected government; it is not for us to dictate their foreign policy. But our own U.S. statute forbids us to trade with such a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/21/world/middleeast/isis-pressed-for-ransom-before-killing-james-foley.html

: re: Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, Aug 16, 2014 at 7:43 AM
Subject: re: Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Our republic was founded on the assertion that all citizens are collectively sovereign and none is above the law. No one has seriously challenged this tenet since Richard Nixon let slip "what I'm saying is that when the president does it, that means it's not illegal". By then, America had decisively rejected him and his paranoid theories, hounding him from office.

   But a new theory, no less insidious has grown up in the same niche. Now we are told, the president of the United States can't be prosecuted for what he did in good faith on the advice of his lawyers, and his lawyers can't be prosecuted for what they do in their office. Presto! Even when a crime may be proven, culpability magically vanishes when it's spread over enough lawyers. This is abomination.  President Obama and judge Barron may disagree over the details. But one or both of them need to stand trial for the murders of the al-Awlakis, father and son. And since the president's own Department of Justice can't be trusted to prosecute such a case, it falls to our Congress to impeach. I'm pretty sure murdering a citizen for political speech is a "high crime".

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?pagewanted=all

: re:It’s the Loyalty, Stupid

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 7:00 AM
Subject: re:It’s the Loyalty, Stupid
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    A democracy--although not easy--is simple. An issue arises, the People vote, public servants execute the public will. A republic, by contrast, is not simple. The electorate must choose on election day representatives who--when faced with issues yet unforeseen--we conjecture will act as the People would have wanted. It is for this reason that character and record loom so large in our politics. 

    We have now fifty years of evidence that Hillary can't resist a strong man. Barry Goldwater, Bill Clinton, Hosni Mubarak...whatever the issue, she's been found embracing whatever the alpha male asserted, and him along with it.

   Were everything going along swimmingly and were there no surprises coming down the pike, a bright, hard-working caretaker who already knows all the players might be what America needs. That's not the world we'll face in 2016. And Hillary Clinton is not the leader I'd trust to advance my interests in those unforeseen crises.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/13/opinion/maureen-dowd-its-the-loyalty-stupid.html?_r=0

LETTERS

Imagining a Romney Presidency

Published: November 1, 2012To the Editor:

David Brooks sketches two unsatisfactory scenarios. In one, President Obama is re-elected but is hamstrung by a Republican-dominated House. In the other, Mitt Romney is elected and spends his term fighting with a Democratic-dominated Senate.

But of course, we the people aren’t constrained to pick from Mr. Brooks’s menu. If we were to re-elect President Obama and put Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, we could actually, finally get the change we voted for four years ago.

BARRY HASKELL LEVINE
Lafayette, Calif., Oct. 30, 2012

LETTERS

When the U.S. Kills an American Citizen

Published: October 12, 2011To the Editor:

Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen, with constitutional guarantees of due process of law. Indeed, if our courts were empowered to strip any of us of citizenship, all our “rights” would be merely boons granted at the courts’ pleasure. Unless he walked into a United States courthouse or embassy to renounce his citizenship, American law permits only one scenario in which he would not be entitled to a full trial (whether in person or in absentia).

Our law provides that we can infer that one has renounced American citizenship by “serving in the armed forces of a foreign state if such armed forces are engaged in hostilities against the United States.”

Name that state and show that Mr. Awlaki served in armed forces, and you have a case for denying him a trial. Until then, he’s a murder victim.

BARRY HASKELL LEVINE
Lafayette, Calif., Oct. 12, 2011

LETTERS

A Military Trial for the 9/11 Detainees

Published: April 5, 2011

To the Editor:

In some alternative reality, the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a federal court might have been “the defining event of my time as attorney general” for Eric H. Holder Jr. In the current political reality, that has been precluded by Congressional grandstanding.

All is not yet lost. Mr. Holder can still do much to restore our standing in the community of nations by prosecuting torturers, and he can restore civil rights here in this country by repudiating 10 years of expanded use of national security letters, the secret government subpoenas for records or data.

Mr. Holder has a difficult job, in which the ever-changing “art of the possible” (that is to say, politics) intersects with the eternal demands of justice. It’s not yet time to admit defeat.

BARRY HASKELL LEVINE
Lafayette, Calif., April 5, 2011