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You read it here first. See Jay J. Johnson-Castro’s Christmas letter to the President–gm

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Press Release
February 22, 2008

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD ANNOUNCES OPPOSITION TO FEDERAL JUDICIAL NOMINATION OF CCA GENERAL COUNSEL GUS PURYEAR

On June 13, 2007, President Bush nominated Gustavus Adolphus Puryear IV for a position on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. Mr. Puryear currently serves as vice president and general counsel for Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit private prison company. If appointed he would serve as a federal judge in the same jurisdiction where CCA is headquartered.

Since 2000, at least 260 federal lawsuits naming CCA, company subsidiaries or CCA employees have been filed in the Middle District of Tennessee. Such cases would constitute a conflict of interest for Mr. Puryear, and assigning them to other judges would not be an effective use of judicial resources.

Of greater concern is that Mr. Puryear lacks familiarity with the federal courts and has little trial or litigation experience. By his own admission he has tried only two cases to verdict; he has been personally involved in only five federal cases, most recently a decade ago. He is not admitted to practice before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is over the Middle District of Tennessee, and received only a “qualified” rating from the American Bar Association rather than a “highly qualified” rating.

Both Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker strongly support Mr. Puryear’s nomination. Neither Senator has acknowledged the substantial financial contributions received from Mr. Puryear and his employer, CCA – which include over $80,000 to Senator Alexander and $27,000 to Senator Corker since 2004.

Further, Mr. Puryear mentioned in disclosure statements that he is a member of the Nashville-based Belle Meade Country Club. The fact that Mr. Puryear maintains membership in an exclusive, predominately white club that did not admit its first minority member until 1994, and reportedly does not afford voting privileges to female members but only to male members, is a matter of significant concern for a federal judicial nominee.

In an Associated Press national wire article concerning Mr. Puryear’s nomination, Vanderbilt Professor Stefanie Lindquist was quoted as saying his judicial appointment “might slide through as a compromise.” The National Lawyers Guild does not believe the people of Tennessee should have to compromise or settle for a less-than-qualified federal judge to represent their interests in U.S. District Court.

The National Lawyers Guild calls on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary to vote down this unqualified, conflicted and controversial judicial candidate.

The UN Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Migrants, Jorge Bustamante, conducted an official tour of the USA in April and May of 2007. A report on that visit was released to the Human Rights Council on March 7, 2008. Below are sample findings from the report and a directory to sections of the report as archived here at the Texas Civil Rights Review.–gm

118. Children should be removed from jail-like detention centres and placed in home-like facilities. Due care should be given to rights delineated for children in custody in the American Bar Association “Standards for the Custody, Placement, and Care; Legal Representation; and Adjudication of Unaccompanied Alien Children in the United States.”

121. Whenever possible, migrant women who are suffering the effects of persecution or abuse, or who are pregnant or nursing infants, should not be detained. If these vulnerable women cannot be released from ICE custody, the Department of Homeland Security should develop alternative programmes such as intense supervision or electronic monitoring, typically via ankle bracelets. These alternatives have proven effective during pilot programmes. They are not only more humane for migrants who are particularly vulnerable in the detention setting or who have family members who require their presence, but they also cost, on average, less than half the price of detention.

Sections of the Bustamante Report archived at the Texas Civil Rights Review

Summary: Banned from Hutto without Satisfactory Explanation.

I.A.: Rights to Fair Deportation Hearings Violated

I.B.: USA ‘Long Way Out of Step’ with Rights to Liberty

II.A. & II.B.: The Spriri of 1996 and Mandatory Deportations

II.C.: Forty Local and State Agencies Recruited for Immigration Enforcement

II.D. & II.E.: A System of Morning Raids and Mandatory Detentions

III.A. & III.B.: Rebuilding New Orleans upon Migrant Labor Abuses

IV. & V.: Punitive, Inconsiderate, and Expensive Policies Should be Reversed

We have also converted the report of UN Special Rapporteur Jorge Bustamante to pdf format. (Get it here: 250kb).

We are awaiting permission to identify the author. –gm

Dear Editor,

I am afraid that, as an historian, I must respectfully disagree with some of your praise for The Great Debaters. Although I congratulate Winfrey and Washington for bringing the story of a authentic hero such as Melvin Tolson to the attention of the general public, I still must object – strongly – to their “improvements.”

There is a universe of difference – mental, moral, spiritual, and ethical – between defeating a USC debate team (my alma mater, incidentally) in Bovard Auditorium and vanquishing Harvard in Sanders Theatre – the same difference that would hold if the Wiley College football team had actually beaten the Crimson in Harvard Stadium while the film showed them beating the Trojans in the Coliseum.

But the real problem is the question of being true to historical fact. I have no doubt that racists will latch on to the rather cheap melodramatic substitution of Harvard for USC in order to attack the veracity of the movie’s portrait of Jim Crow.

A similar case arose with Anne Frank’s diary. Because Anne’s father removed some of her most intimate entries dealing with sexual matters, the Holocaust deniers declared that the entire diary was a fraud, and a team of scholars had to waste everybody’s time and money performing an exhaustive inquest in order to prove the reality of the diary. So it is important to get the facts right.

Two quick responses from the CounterPunch audience. Both stand clearly on the side of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The first one is short and sharp:

is the rev. wright not a truth sayer? are not his arguments entirely valid here? politically they may be a disaster for obama, proof that all his talk about hope and cooperation is spurious in a racist society.

The second reply opens with a question: was I likening Sen. Obama to Saint Peter when I said that he denied Rev. Wright three times with the phrase ‘as if’? Well, I was thinking about the three denials that are recalled during the Christian holy week. Then the reader turns to liberation theology:

The mostly secular mainstream didn’t want to hear about liberation theology when Latin American Christian base communities were being slaughtered with weapons and training provided by Uncle Sam, and most won’t want to hear about it now. Nevertheless, when it comes to Truth, there is always and everywhere no time like the present.

Thank you for pointing out the parallels between Liberation Theology and the theology of certain African American pastors. And now in the Spirit of the Season, some food for thought from an Arab Christian:

‘Persecution does not make the just man to suffer, nor does oppression destroy him if he is on the right side of Truth. Socrates smiled as he took poison, and Stephen smiled as he was stoned. What truly hurts is our conscience that aches when we oppose it, and dies when we betray it.’ — Kahlil Gibran

To both readers, thank you. Without contradicting anything you have said, I offer an experiment in hope, that an ethic of toleration might be applied toward a more respectful treatment of Rev. Wright than the one we have thus far witnessed from too many parties and players in the Great American Presidential Election Game–gm