TMV encourages and applauds writers who use blog technology to take a weblog and make blogs more than extended op-ed pages (or in some cases, more than an Internet versions of talk radio). There are several blog writers who have done that by running original reporting and interviews on their site.
One is the always-original progressive weblog, The Talking Dog. And TTD scores again, this time with a fascinating interview with H. Candace Gorman. As usual, we’ll give you the intro and a small excerpt but it must be read in full. TTD clearly prepares for each interview (he is an attorney and must be a good one) because his questions are quite specific and his final interviews — whether you agree with them or not — always provide fresh info for thoughtand discussion. The intro:
H. Candace Gorman is an attorney based in Chicago specializing in Civil Rights law (among her credits are a successful argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in Jones v. R.R. Donnelly & Sons, a landmark case on the statute of limitations in employment discrimination cases that has even impacted my own legal practice). Ms. Gorman represents two North African nationals detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is the author of the Guantanamo Blog, and is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.
One of her most interesting responses comes at the end:
The Talking Dog: Is there anything else that I should have asked you, or anything else that my readers or the public needs to know about Gitmo, the war on terror, the government’s detention policy, or its regard for our Constitution?
H. Candace Gorman: We should all be very concerned about what this Administration is doing. This week the Pentagon announced it is looking at our bank records, not because they think anything criminal is going on but because they can learn stuff…They are listening to our phone calls and reading our emails… Every day there is something new and illegal that we learn they are doing… it is hard to keep up. Harder still to stop them from breaking the law. But we must.
Finally, the public needs to understand that right now NOTHING is happening with these lawsuits. There is no discovery. Everything is stayed, and has been since before I started in December 2005. For the attorneys (not to mention the detainees), the fact that everything is stayed is frustrating. There has been limited activity- such as the judge ordering the government to produce the CSRT documents for Al Ghizzari… though not medical records that we have been seeking because he is so sick (lung problems, hepatitis B, possible liver cancer)… one of the judges involved, Judge Reggie Walton, has the Scooter Libby trial coming up… so he won’t have much time to focus on these cases.
Read it all.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.