Things have been quiet over the past week on the Lockerbie front. But today The Herald carries a story that is tangentially relevant. It reads in part:
‘Gordon Brown today suffers another heavy blow in his bid to secure a face-saving victory on extending pre-charge detention to 42 days with Elish Angiolini, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, coming out firmly against the proposal.
‘On the eve of the crunch vote on the UK Government's flagship Counter Terrorism Bill, which could have serious ramifications for the Prime Minister's political future, Scotland's chief legal officer, who is in charge of all prosecutions north of the border, has told The Herald that extending the period in which a terror suspect can be held without charge from the current 28 days to 42 is unnecessary.
‘Her opposition raises the prospect of a potential cross-border rift should the UK Government seek to extend the detention period involving a Scottish case.
‘Under the bill, a bid for such an extension has to be underpinned by a report from a chief constable and supported by the Lord Advocate; in England, it has to be supported by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), currently Sir Ken Macdonald….
‘Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, said: "This is an extremely significant opinion that all Scottish MPs should take very seriously. Now that the senior legal officers in Scotland and England take the same view - sceptical of the UK Government's plans - we should be listening very carefully to their voices."
‘Ms Angiolini, appointed in October 2006 under the previous Labour administration at Holyrood, is regarded as independent-minded and recently appeared at odds with her London colleagues.
‘In the Lockerbie case, she was prepared to reveal a document provided by an unnamed foreign power, which could potentially clear Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi of the terrorist outrage.
‘However, Lord Davidson, the Advocate General who is Westminster's legal representative on Scottish matters, urged, at the behest of David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, that a public immunity certificate be issued so the document was not made public on the grounds of national security.’
The full article can be read here.
Here's a bit of news from yesterday's Washington Post:
ReplyDeleteLobbying's Good Guys? On the Campaign Trail, They're Invisible.
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Tuesday, June 10, 2008; Page A21
"Woodrow Wilson started the trend. Before he ran for president in 1912, Wilson was a scholar of factional politics at Princeton University. He won the White House in part by attacking the object of his expertise. Many presidential wannabes since then have followed Wilson's lead and lambasted "special interests" as a way of demonstrating how much they care about the rest of us.
This year's vitriol against lobbyists by Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama, therefore, is not new. But it is different in one respect. It is, more than in the past, indiscriminate. The candidates go after anyone who registers to lobby in Washington, without regard to who or what the lobbyist represents.
And that has rankled in the nation's capital. After all, is every lobbyist the same?
Wilson and other lobbyist-bashers of the past made a distinction between the corporate lobbyists they disdained and other, more sympathetic petitioners of government.
But Obama doesn't permit any kind of federally registered lobbyists to give money to his campaign or to the Democratic National Committee. McCain has forced lobbyists to leave his staff and has required lobbyist volunteers to stay away from his offices and disclose their clients to the campaign.
Those kinds of actions and the candidates' harsh words about lobbyists annoy Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States.
"All lobbyists are not the same," he said. "While special interest lobbyists outnumber socially responsible lobbyists by a major factor, there are many lobbyists who do remarkable work for the public good."
To think and say otherwise, he added, is "typical campaign demagoguery."
Gary D. Bass, president of OMB Watch, a nonprofit group that pushes for government accountability, agrees that public interest lobbyists are being unfairly besmirched. Why should groups that try to eradicate disease or protect animals be attacked as, essentially, un-American?
"It's an honorable tradition and something that's essential to the fabric of our democracy," Bass said. "The real problem that needs to be discussed here is the influence of money, not lobbying."
Sister Simone Campbell also thinks the attacks are misguided. She is a registered lobbyist for -- and executive director of -- Network, an advocacy group founded in 1971 by 47 Roman Catholic nuns. She and her colleagues lobby for humanitarian causes -- improved conditions for immigrants and reconstruction of Iraq.
But unlike Pacelle and Bass, she is not distressed by the candidates' comments and policies. She's grown accustomed to the nastiness that surrounds her profession.
"I have a tough skin," she said. "If I took offense, I couldn't do this job."
Besides, she said, lobbyists are easy targets, especially in the simplistic world of presidential rhetoric. "Politics is like coloring books," she explained. "The reality is much more complex."
Many lobbyists for causes less altruistic than Campbell's feel exactly the same way. They like to point out that the First Amendment protects the right to lobby for any interest, including the corporate type.
That won't make lobbyists likable, of course. But, nonprofit advocates ask, is it too much to expect a presidential candidate to recognize the difference between a white hat and a black one?
Fight Over Pan Am 103
The State Department has opened negotiations with the government of Libya to settle a variety of claims, including those lodged by the families of Pan Am Flight 103, the flight bombed by terrorists nearly 20 years ago, claiming the lives of 189 Americans.
Remarkably, the Libyans still owe each family $2 million of the $10 million they promised in compensation for the horrific attack.
The families' cause is represented in Washington by the lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates, which is headed by former Clinton administration official Jack Quinn. The firm stands to be paid what amounts to a standard lobbying fee, which can amount to more than $300,000 a year, if the Libyans pony up. To that end, it has been bringing victims' family members to town to plead for justice, including, recently, Kara Weipz of Cherry Hill, N.J., whose 20-year-old brother, Richard Monetti, was killed as he was traveling home for Christmas from a semester of study abroad.
Libya also has an active lobbyist. The Livingston Group recently signed an eye-popping $2.4 million contract to represent the government here. But Robert L. Livingston, the firm's co-founder, is not resisting the victims' pleas.
In fact, quite the contrary.
"We don't have anything to do with the cases; we're working on trying to enhance the relations between Libya and the U.S.," he said. "But it's my hope and anticipation that those cases would be settled in the not-too-distant future."
Why? "Settlement of those claims would certainly enhance the relationship between those countries." We'll see..."