Blog of Rights
Gabe
Rottman

Gabe Rottman is a legislative counsel/policy advisor in the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, focusing on the First Amendment. Gabe served as an attorney in private practice before coming back to the ACLU. Prior to law school, Gabe worked in the WLO as a senior writer and communications specialist. Gabe has a J.D. magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was a notes editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, and a B.A. from McGill University in political science and history, where he was on the dean’s honors list.

08/16/2007
Detention

Trust Us...

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:33am
Check this out. It may be a little bit outside the habeas ambit, but it's clearly related to the executive supremacy debate. I'll have more shortly.
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08/13/2007

Dems, Redeem Thyselves

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:32pm
Saturday's Times had this extraordinary editorial demanding that the White House disclose sufficient information to allow Congress to deal with the FISA eavesdropping expansion with at least some sense of what it's doing.

First, note this mention of Senate Intelligence Committ
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08/10/2007
Detention

Six More Released

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:39pm
Six more detainees have been repatriated, bringing the total down at Gitmo to around 355 with 80 still cleared for release. Also, of the 14 "high-value" detainees transferred from CIA custody recently, all have been deemed "enemy combatants." Interestingly though,
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08/07/2007
Detention

Brits Change Course, Accept Gitmo Detainees

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:29pm
I honestly don't know what to make of this development (though I'm ecstatic there's movement on the detainee front). We know the State Department has been pushing hard for repatriation. Guess it finally stuck.
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08/06/2007

Patriot Act Redux

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:14pm
I was working for the ACLU on September 11, 2001. Our offices were about a block away from Capitol Hill, directly across the street from the Supreme Court. That morning, we all knew two things: a) we were scared, and b) the aftermath would not be the most conducive environment for level-headed legislating.

Unfortunately, that aftermath has been prolonged, and prolonged again, by the Bush administration's disingenuous use of our pent-up anxiety to th
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08/03/2007

Secret Opinions and Propaganda

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:23am
The Washington Post reported on Thursday morning that one of the impetuses (impeti?) behind the push to further revise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was a classified opinion that reportedly declared part of the
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08/01/2007
Detention

So Disingenuous

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 5:15pm
Cheney on Larry King last night:
"I think you need to have someplace to hold those individuals who have been captured during the global war on terror. I'm thinking of people like Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This is a man we captured in Pakistan. He's the m
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08/01/2007

As the President Plays the Fear Card, Gonzales' Shoe Looks Likelier to Drop

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:54pm
Between the tussle over subpoenas, the possibility of contempt or perjury charges, and criticism from both parties over no less than three separate scandals, it's no surprise that the press has begun to tack on "embattled" to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' name.

And the Hill's restlessness over the AG and his programs may also be the reason President Bush is n
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08/01/2007
Detention

Two Week Round-Up

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:48pm
I realize I’ve been asleep at the proverbial switch now for a while now. Mea culpa. I just wrote the bar (hopefully that's all behind me now). In any event, some key stories from the last two weeks that habeas trackers should note. First item: chubby detainees. Walter Isaacson, the CNN-Time Magazine honcho and Ben Franklin biographer, teased out this little gem from Karl Rove at an Aspen
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07/31/2007
Detention

Containment for a New Century

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:44pm
This is so right on, I can't help but plotz (and sorry I haven't been posting recently; just wrote the bar, and decided to take a few days off).
A 21st-century rendering of X’s vision of containment would involve the closing of the Guantánamo Bay det
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