Not sure if this was posted earlier, but I thought it was interesting
WASHINGTON -- More than 80 attorneys who have been offering free-of-charge legal services to Guantánamo detainees issued a statement Monday supporting Democrat Barack Obama's presidential bid.
''We are at a critical point in the presidential campaign, and as lawyers who have been deeply involved in the Guantánamo litigation to preserve the important right to habeas corpus, we are writing to urge you to support Senator Obama,'' the lawyers said in an open letter dated Monday.
Lawyers signing it included partners from major U.S. law firms and small-town practitioners as well as Michael Ratner, whose New York Center for Constitutional Rights has for years coordinated legal efforts to provide representation to each of the men held without charge at the offshore prison compound in southeast Cuba.
Congress in 2006 stripped the Guantánamo captives of the traditional right to file writs of habeas corpus in U.S. district court to challenge their detention -- and instead offered detainees more limited appeals in federal courts.
The U.S. Supreme Court is now reviewing the constitutionality of that law.
Guantánamo has not been a major theme of the presidential campaign, but mainstream candidates on both sides -- notably former Vietnam POW John McCain, the Republican senator -- have said they would move to close the prison camps because they have stirred anti-American anger across the globe.
Obama has gone further than many. In a November speech in Des Moines, Iowa, he pledged to both close the prison camps and ''restore habeas corpus,'' a position that Democratic rival John Edwards has also staked out.
Hillary Clinton, likewise, has said from the U.S. Senate that she favors closure. But she has not prominently included pledges to do it in her campaign stump speeches.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/397031.html
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