This is one of them.

Providing all of my research were the “family values” Republicans.

This week, second term Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina disappeared for six days, leaving the state without a chief executive who could make decisions in an emergency. His Republican lieutenant governor didn’t know where he was, and had not been given any authority to make decisions in his absence.

The state police said they had not been informed. His wife told the Associated Press she didn’t know where he was, wasn’t worried about him, and thought he was “writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids” over the Father’s Day weekend. His senior aides said he was walking along the Appalachian Trail to “clear his head.”

But it wasn’t his head that he was clearing. When he returned, after first lying to a reporter for the Columbia, South Carolina newspaper The State who caught up with him on his return to the Atlanta airport, he finally admitted he went to Argentina to meet with a long-time lover. His wife, who was not by his side when he held an early afternoon press conference, later said she and the governor had separated two weeks earlier. The State later produced e-mail love letters it had been keeping since December.

The rising young star of the Republican party who was seen as a presidential contender in 2012, the man who was head of the Republican Governors Association until the day after he acknowledged his extramarital affair, the man who had wanted to deprive his state of $700 million in federal stimulus funds as a political message to President Obama, the man who had established himself as a beacon for the sanctity of marriage and the values of the oh-so-pure Religious right, was not only an adulterer, but for at least the second time had left his state at risk since there were no contingency plans of how to reach him in an emergency.

Alas, Gov. Sanford isn’t the only “family values” philanderer. Slightly more than a week earlier, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) admitted he had a nine month extramarital affair with one of his campaign staff. Ensign, who was contemplating a run for president in 2012, had been chair of the Republican Policy Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Like Gov. Sanford, Sen. Ensign only admitted to the affair after information had been leaked to the media.

This is the same John Ensign who, as a congressman, had curled his lips in revulsion at Bill Clinton’s affair, and demanded he either resign or be impeached. “He has no credibility,” Ensign told the Las Vegas Review–Journal in 1998. Six years later, now a senator, Ensign supported a federal ban on same sex marriages by declaring, “Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded . .  . . [M]arriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.” Ironically, Ensign is active in Promise Keepers, an evangelical group.

Also vigorously calling for President Clinton’s impeachment, while having had their own extramarital affairs and covering them up or lying about them, were:

Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chair of the House judiciary committee and the “house manager” for the impeachment, who lied about his own four-year affair with a married woman and then when a newspaper published details in 1998 called the affair in the 40s nothing more than a “youthful indiscretion.” He retired in 2007 after 17 terms in the House.

Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.), who was the first legislator in Congress to call for Clinton’s resignation and then became one of the leaders of the impeachment movement. Barr’s background, however, wasn’t family values pure. He never denied committing adultery with his second wife, and later, while married to his third wife, was photographed at what passed as a charity event licking whipped cream off the breasts of two women. Barr left office in 2003, after four terms.

Rep. Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho), who was one of the first to call for Clinton’s resignation, told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that God had pardoned her sins for her six-year extra-marital affair. Chenoweth left office in January 2001 after keeping her promise not to serve more than three terms.

Fourteen term Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind), chair of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, who not only had a long-time affair with a state employee but had fathered a son from that affair. His website once screamed, “Above all, Dan Burton believes the people have a right to principled leadership and that character does matter.”

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who told Tim Russert on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” in 1999 that “The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy—a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.” However, Craig himself was a “bad boy.”

In September 2007 he pleaded guilty, and then tried to withdraw his conviction on charges that he solicited a man in the Minneapolis–St. Paul airport. Several gay men later told the Idaho Statesman that Craig, who was married since 1983, had previously tried to solicit them or had sexual relations with them. Craig resigned in September 2007, and then reversed himself, staying in office through 2008. He did not run for re-election.

• Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), House speaker from 1995 to 1999, who may have had an affair while his first wife was in the hospital recovering from cancer. Gingrich later cheated on his second wife with the woman who became his third wife during the time he was pushing for Clinton’s resignation.
• Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), who was Gingrich’s designated successor until he admitted his own infidelities and eventually resigned from the House.
• Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who was elected to Livingston’s House seat and served three terms before being identified in a prostitution scandal in Louisiana. In 2004, he was elected to the Senate, three years before Hustler magazine linked him as a client of a prostitution service in Washington, D.C.
• Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa), who had a five year affair with a woman 35 years his junior. She later charged that Sherwood had assaulted her several times. He eventually settled for what AP reported was about $500,000. Among those who supported Sherwood during his primary re-election were Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), one of the leaders of the conservative coalition who in November 2005 said that “Compassionate Conservatism relies on healthy families,” and President George W. Bush who went to northeastern Pennsylvania to help raise funds for Sherwood. However, in the general election of November 2006, Sherwood was defeated for a fifth term.

Add to the list of morally bankrupt Republicans:

• Five term Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) who resigned in September 1995, three years before the Clinton impeachment, after the bipartisan Ethics Committee unanimously recommended his expulsion following charges of sexual abuse and assault by 10 women, most of them either former staffers or lobbyists.
• Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), a six-term congressman, and co-chair of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus, who had sent sexually explicit e-mails and text messages to a 16 year-old male Congressional page. Foley resigned in September 2006, two months before the general election, long after the Republican leadership had failed to discipline him, and only after a blog (stopsexpredators.blogspot.com) and ABC-TV news exposed his hoped-for affairs may have included other staff dating back at least a decade.
• Rep. Robert E. Bauman (R-Md.), publicly homophobic founder of Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union, who admitted he had solicited sex with a 16 year old male. Bauman lost the general election in 1980 and later declared himself to be gay.
• Rep. Donald Lukens (R-Ohio), who was convicted in 1989 of a misdemeanor for having sex with a 16-year-old girl. The “affair” may have begun three years earlier. Lukens finally resigned in October 1990, after having lost the Republican primary several months earlier.

Republican leaders aren’t the only ones who commit adultery, nor are conservatives or members of the Religious Right, including preachers, solely the ones to have violated the seventh and tenth Commandments. But, it is the “family values” Republican leaders, who have led the party of right wing moral indignation; it is the Religious Right that has overtaken the party and wears the now-tarnished shield of righteousness to protect itself against anyone who doesn’t share their own views of the world, including moderate and liberal Republicans, and anyone belonging to another political party.

The hypocrisy and moral turpitude of the leaders is just one reason why only 21 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans.

Walter Brasch is a professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. His most recent book is Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush. He can be reached at brasch@bloomu.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals cheated former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman in multiple ways. The most glaring example involves the statute of limitations, so we will start there.
It’s undisputed that the government was tardy in bringing bribery charges against Siegelman and co-defendant Richard Scrushy.

All of the activity that constituted the alleged bribery took place in summer 1999. But the government’s original indictment was dated May 17, 2005. That’s almost one full year past the five-year statute of limitations.

Even if Siegelman and Scrushy had committed the worst sort of bribery–and the facts and the law show that they didn’t commit bribery at all–the government missed the boat by a long shot.

So how did prosecutors get away with this? First, they crafted a vague indictment that made it unclear when the alleged events took place. And U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller denied Siegelman’s motion for a bill of particulars, which would have forced the prosecution to provide specifics.

That probably was the first clear sign that the fix was in on this case.

More importantly, prosecutors argued that Siegelman did not raise the limitations issue in the proper way, that he essentially waived that defense. Both the trial and appellate courts have agreed with the government.

But they are wrong. And here is why.

The 11th Circuit based its finding on two cases, neither of which is applicable to the Siegelman case.

One is United States v. Ramirez, 324 F.3d 1225 (11th Cir. 2003). Ramirez involved a limitations defense raised by way of a post-trial Rule 29 motion, the same method Siegelman’s attorneys used. And the defense was rejected, as it was in the Siegelman case.

But here is where the cases differ: In Ramirez, the court found “when a statute of limitations defense is clear on the face of the indictment and requires no further development of facts at trial, a defendant waives his right to raise that defense by failing to raise it in a pretrial motion.”

Ramirez does not apply to the Siegelman case because the limitations defense was NOT clear on the face of the indictment. In fact, the indictment in the Siegelman case said the alleged crimes took place “[f]rom on or about July 19, 1999, and continuing through on or about May 23, 2000 . . .”

On its face, the indictment was unclear. It cites a first date that is way outside the statute of limitations and cites a second date that is inside the limitations period–barely. Fuller did not force the government to make the indictment clear, so Ramirez does not apply.

Of course, if Fuller had forced prosecutors to present a clear indictment, the case would have been over with an acquittal for Siegelman and Scrushy. And the judge certainly didn’t want that. So he cheated them.

The 11th Circuit also cited United States v. Najjar, 283 F.3d 1306, 1308 (11th Cir. 2002) for its proposition that “the statute of limitations is a matter of defense that must be asserted at trial by the defendant and that failure to do so results in a waiver.” The 11th Circuit says, “Other circuits agree,” and proceeds to cite a number of other cases.

But the appellate panel got it wrong. The question in Najjar was this: Can a limitations defense be waived in a plea agreement? The Siegelman case had nothing to do with a plea agreement. Najjar does not address the same issues that are raised on the Siegelman appeal. As lawyers like to say, the two cases are not “apposite.”

Other cases cited by the 11th Circuit involve instances where a limitations defense was raised for the first time on appeal. It’s undisputed that raising such a defense for the first time on appeal is improper. But Siegelman did not do that.

He raised the defense in a post-trial Rule 29 motion, which the 11th Circuit has found is proper. In fact, those very circumstances were present in Phillips v. U.S., 843 F.2d 438, 441-43 (11th Cir. 1988). In Phillips, a motion was filed after trial, and the 11th Circuit ordered a judgment of acquittal based on the statute of limitations.

The Phillips court stated the following:

Statutes of limitations, both criminal and civil, are to be liberally interpreted in favor of repose. United States v. Marion, 404 U.S. 307, 322 n. 14, 92 S.Ct. 455, 464 n. 14, 30 L.Ed.2d 468, 480 n. 14 (1971); United States v. Habig, 390 U.S. 222, 227, 88 S.Ct. 926, 929, 19 L.Ed.2d 1055, 1059 (1968); United States v. Scharton, 285 U.S. 518, 522, 52 S.Ct. 416, 417, 76 L.Ed. 917 (1932). In the criminal law area, such an interpretation protects the defendants’ right to be free from defending against overly stale criminal charges. As the Supreme Court observed in Toussie v. United States, 397 U.S. 112, 114-15, 90 S.Ct. 858, 860, 25 L.Ed.2d 156, 161 (1970):

The purpose of a statute of limitations is to limit exposure to criminal prosecution to a certain fixed period of time following the occurrence of those acts the legislature has decided to punish by criminal sanctions. Such a limitation is designed to protect individuals from having to defend themselves against charges when the basic facts may have become obscured by the passage of time and to minimize the danger of official punishment because of acts in the far-distant past. Such a time limit may also have the salutary effect of encouraging law enforcement officials promptly to investigate suspected criminal activity.

On the Siegelman appeal, the 11th Circuit completely reversed itself, failing to follow its own precedent in Phillips.

And it butchered two fundamental legal concepts:

(1) Siegelman and Scrushy had to defend themselves against allegations that had become so obscure that the prosecution couldn’t provide any specificity on the dates involved.

(2) The prosecution was lazy and tardy in its investigation–and federal judges let them get away with it.

How nuts is the 11th Circuit’s finding?

Imagine that you are charged in your town with jaywalking, which has a one-year statute of limitations. You get to court and find that the prosecution’s complaint doesn’t say when you jaywalked, it doesn’t say where you jaywalked, it doesn’t say who witnessed you jaywalking.

You tell the judge, “How am I supposed to defend myself against this?” The judge says, “I don’t know, but you’re going to have to. Good luck.”

That’s essentially what Don Siegelman and Richard Scrushy faced. The prosecution failed in its duty at every step. And both trial and appellate judges let them get away with it.

This is scary stuff, folks. And there is more to come.

Roger Shuler resides in Birmingham, Alabama. A 1978 graduate of the University of Missouri, Shuler worked 11 years as a reporter and editor for the Birmingham Post-Herald before working 19 years in several editorial positions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He blogs at Legal Schnauzer where this report was originally published.

But now, well into Obama’s second 100 days in office, many are expressing outrage and disappointment that many of the president’s decisions have followed the path of his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

The Obama administration has invoked the “state secrets” privilege several times to prevent lawsuits dealing with “extraordinary renditions” and warrantless wiretapping from ever being heard in court. Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers have argued that detainees at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their detention.

The government has also caved to Democrats and Republicans in Congress to keep any of the Guantanamo Bay detainees from ever entering the U.S., even though the Defense Department (DOD) has cleared these men for release and declared that they present no threat to U.S. national security. Reliable reports suggest that Obama is considering “indefinite detention” for GITMO detainees who cannot be tried in U.S. courts because the evidence against them was obtained through torture.

The government has gone to court to appeal a court ruling ordering the release of a 2004 report from the Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) describing the harsh treatment of prisoners in the agency’s secret prisons. And the new president has refused to make public photographs reportedly depicting abusive interrogations at these and other government detention centers.

Obama recently rejected a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama’s “clean coal” policies because the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged “presidential communications.”

On the issue of electronic surveillance, the new president has not repudiated the Bush-era executive orders supporting warrantless wiretapping and the legal opinions used to support them. Obama has resisted a “truth commission” to investigate former officials who allegedly broke the law and committed crimes, saying he would rather look forward than back.

Government lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought on behalf of a couple who were placed on a terrorist watch list. And when watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Justice Department seeking records related to former vice president Dick Cheney’s interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the “outing” of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the Justice Department declined to turn over the records.

Interviews with human rights and open-government advocates produced few explanations of the president’s actions, beyond calls for him to live up to his promises.

But a few have offered insights as to the “why” of what they see as Obama’s U-Turn. Among them is Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois law school. He told Inter Presse Service (IPS) S, “After winning the Democratic Party against Senator Clinton by appealing to its progressive wing, Obama immediately veered far to the right and co-opted all of the Clinton people into his campaign and then administration. So what we are seeing now is a Third Clinton Term with a continuation of many of the same foreign and domestic policies pursued by the Bush Jr. administration.”

He added, “This has little to do with personnel and personalities. It has to do structurally with the preservation and further extension of the American Empire abroad that necessarily requires the further consolidation of an American Police State at home. Hence the Obama administration has continued to ratify the illegal and unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration in court cases across the board, while escalating the Bush admistration’s imperialist intervention into Afghanistan and now expanding it into Pakistan.”

Another explanation came from Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has mobilized dozens of pro-bono lawyers to represent Guantanamo prisoners.

He asked rhetorically in response to an IPS reporter’s question, “Why did Obama make promises about less secrecy, transparency and a narrowed state secrets privilege and proceed to have his administration assert positions and back legislation that was directly contrary to those promises? In the U.S., we complain about Chile hiding the crimes of the Pinochet regime, or Germany hiding the Nazi crimes or Russia the crimes of the KGB, yet where is the screaming when President Obama hides the war crimes of the Bush administration?”

His answer: “In part, the recent blatant assertions of secrecy are to hide crimes of former and some current officials. That is why President Obama is keeping the torture photos hidden. That is why he is continuing to assert broad state secret claims to try and hide the rendition program. That is why the 2004 CIA report on the secret site interrogations will be released with heavy redactions.

Not only would the photos and documents implicate the Bushies, but remember some of those abuses were apparently committed by units under the command of the recently appointed commander in Afghanistan, General (Stanley) McChrystal. Some of the crimes were allegedly approved or committed by the current Deputy Director of the CIA, Stephen Kappes, who is keeping his job.”

“Release of the torture and abuse information and especially the photos would put incredible pressure on President Obama to actually hold accountable the torture team. This is not something he wants to do. He wants to ‘move on’, but he will never be able to ‘look forward’ to the future without torture until and unless the perpetrators of torture are punished,” he declared.

Chip Pitts of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee offers another perspective. He told us, ““There are undoubtedly elements of truth in each of the theories – or excuses – I’ve imagined or heard for the president’s broken January promise.”

“But the hedging and retaining litigation and other exceptions, instead of restoring the full presumption of transparency and openness in interpreting FOIA, are as disappointing as the hedging and retaining exceptions on other core planks of the rule of law, such as the prohibition on torture, military commissions, preventive detention, and maintaining ubiquitous surveillance.”

He added, “The free information flows and social networking technologies in the Iranian protests are only the latest indication of transparency’s new historical power. Obama himself recognized in that context the new meaning for Martin Luther King’s injunction that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice.”

“Obama would be better-advised to be on the right side of that history than on the side of darkness and cover-up,” he said.

A more hopeful note comes from Peter M Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University. He notes that the George W. Bush Administration “had the most ambitious view of executive power in history. Bush sympathizers see little difference in the Obama Administration. Bush’s detractors, in some respects, agree.”

But the truth, he says, is probably closer to the Obama Administration casting aside some of the Bush Administration’s more audacious claims while “still struggling to find a consistent stance with regard to its philosophy of executive power.”

How the new administration will ultimately resolve its conflicts between secrecy and open government remains to be seen. But, as President Obama said over the weekend in relation to the current Iranian conflict, “the world is watching.”