Paul Clement as liar?

Our concern about Clement is of a slightly older vintage. When Clement appeared before the Supreme Court on behalf of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the Jose Padilla case on April 28, 2004, skeptical justices asked him about the risk that a detainee like Padilla might be abused while in custody. Clement's response: "Where the government is on a war footing ... you have to trust the executive to make the kind of quintessential military judgments that are involved in things like that." When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that some governments engage in "mild torture" to obtain information from detainees, Clement shot back: "Well, our executive doesn't."

Eight hours later, CBS News aired the first photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib.   from Tim Grieve, at Salon