Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisconsin) has taken a strong position on torture. Feingold, Phi Beta Kappa at Wisconsin, Madison and with law degrees at Oxford (where he was a Rhodes scholar) and Harvard Law School, is the second ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and therefore his statements are especially of importance on the issue of torture and prosecution of former Bush officials for wrongdoing related to torture. Feingold has long been among the most liberal and progressive voices in our government and was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act.
Here is the full text of an official statement released by Senator Feingold:
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold Responding to President Obama's Comments on Possible Consequences for Those Who Authorized Torture
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
"I am pleased that the president made clear that he has not ruled out investigations or prosecutions of those who authorized torture, or provided the legal justification for it. Horrible abuses were committed in the name of the American people, and we cannot look the other way, or just ‘move on.’ The final decision will be up to the attorney general and the president, but I urge the Justice Department to take this matter very seriously. "
Source: http://feingold.senate.gov/...
Moreover, Senator Feingold also released on the same day this statement on Jay Bybee, one of the lawyers responsible for drafting torture memos and now a federal judge sitting on the 9th Circuit of the Federal Court system:
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold on the Bybee Memos Suggesting Grounds for Impeachment
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
"The just released OLC memos, including the 2002 memo authored by Jay Bybee, are a disgrace. The idea that one of the architects of this perversion of the law is now sitting on the federal bench is very troubling. The memos offer some of the most explicit evidence yet that Mr. Bybee and others authorized torture and they suggest that grounds for impeachment can be made. Clearly, the Justice Department has the responsibility to investigate this matter further. As a Senator, I would be a juror in any impeachment trial so I don’t want to reach a conclusion until all the evidence is before me."
Source: http://feingold.senate.gov/...
Feingold also harshly criticized Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, for remarks she made recently on t.v. Sam Stein in his excellent article "Feingold Unloads on Peggy Noonan: 'Never Heard Anything Quite As Disturbing' " over at Huffingtonpost explains:
Senator Russ Feingold, one of the harshest critics of the Bush administration's national security policies, says he cannot bring himself to support President Obama's apparent decision not to investigate or prosecute illegalities from those years.
"Part of what troubles me are the lawyers -- we should see their law school degrees -- who consciously wrote these memos justifying and explaining full well those outrageous arguments," the Wisconsin Democrat said on Tuesday in reference to the Bush-era torture memos released last week. "I cannot join the president, or his spokesman, or [chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel, who said we aren't going [to prosecute these people]. I can't. I just disagree with them."
Later, the Senator took a swipe at some of the rationalizations for avoiding prosecution that have been voiced by Washington lawmakers and pundits.
"If you want to see just how outrageous this is, I refer you to the remarks made by Peggy Noonan this Sunday," he said, referring to the longtime conservative columnist's appearance on ABC's This Week. "I frankly have never heard anything quite as disturbing as her remark that was something to the affect of: 'well sometimes you just have to move on.'"
"Some things in life need to be mysterious," Noonan said on Sunday about the release of the torture memos. "Sometimes you need to just keep walking. ... It's hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that."
Feingold's remarks... represent some of the most forceful pushback against the line coming out of the White House to date. Emanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod have suggested that prosecution of Bush officials is likely off the table... . On Tuesday morning, however, the New York Times reported that White House "aides did not rule out legal sanctions for the Bush lawyers who developed the legal basis for the use of the techniques."
A member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a long-time critic of torture, Feingold viewed investigations and, perhaps, prosecutions as a key tool to restoring America's moral standing.
"It is truly horrifying and unforgivable that anybody operating under the auspices of the United States of America had involvement in any of this," he said. "So I'm not even completely ready to [cede the argument] that people who devised these techniques should be off the hook. I understand the argument. I also remember when people said that they were just following orders. So that troubles me and I am thinking about it."
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Senator Russ Feingold has a long list of accomplishments including being a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award. He is also well known for cosponsorship of campaign reform legislation bearing his name (McCain Feingold Act). As one of the strongest opponents of the capital punishment in the Senate, Feingold co-sponsored, along with Jon Corzine (who would later, as Governor of New Jersey, sign an abolition bill in his state), the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act in 2002. In the 111th Congress, Feingold introduced the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2009.
On January 26, 2009 Feingold, Tom Harkin and Robert Byrd were the sole Democrats to vote against confirmation of Timothy Geithner to be United States Secretary of the Treasury (Independent Bernie Sanders, who caucused with Democrats, also voted against Geithner's confirmation).
Feingold announced in January 2009 that he was planning to introduce a constitutional amendment which would prohibit governors from making temporary Senate appointments instead holding special elections. Feingold has been a consistent critic of the Iraq war.
On August 17, 2005, he became the first senator to call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and urge that a timetable for that withdrawal be set. He called other Democrats "timid" for refusing to take action sooner, and suggested December 31, 2006 as the date for total withdrawal of troops. After other Democrats refused to act on impeaching President Bush, Feingold called in July 2007 for Bush's censure for his management of the Iraq war, accusing him of mounting an "assault" against the Constitution.
Feingold is one of our most principled and progressive senators, often proving a thorn in the side to his own party. For instance, Feingold was the only Democratic senator to vote against a motion to dismiss Congress's 1998–1999 impeachment case of President Bill Clinton. In a statement, Feingold said House prosecutors must have "every reasonable opportunity" to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clinton should be removed from office on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Feingold ultimately voted against conviction on all charges.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/...
As mentioned above, Feingold sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee where he is the Chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution; the Committee on Foreign Relations; and, the Select Committee on Intelligence so he is well placed to speak on the issue of prosecution of torturers and criminal activity within the Bush administration.
Feingold comes from a long tradition of Wisconsin Progressive politics. The state was at the forefront of the progressive movement under Governor and later Senator Robert M. LaFollette. LaFollette was named by historians as being the most influential US senator ever. LaFollette was succeeded as senator by his son, Robert LaFollette, Jr., and later by William Proxmire and Gaylord Nelson (founder of Earth Day).
Russ Feingold will be up for reelection in 2010; he was originally elected in 1992; reelected in 1998 and 2004. In my opinion, he would make an excellent VP under Obama in 2012 (Biden will be very old by then and I think it in the interests of the party that he should step aside so we don't end up in the same position that the GOP did with Cheney) and a terrific president. For his forceful and articulate statements on torture and Bybee, Feingold has again earned our respect, as he has so many times in the past for his outspoken, progressive stands on Iraq, campaign finance and the death penalty. Hats off to Russ Feingold!
NOTE: You can voice support for Russ Feingold or voice your opinions by emailing him or contacting him by telephone or letter through contact information here:
http://feingold.senate.gov/contact_opinion.html