Effort to Disbar Bush Torture Lawyers Earns Kevin Zeese BuzzFlash's Wings of Justice Award

WINGS OF JUSTICE

Kevin Zeese

Honestly, we at BuzzFlash had been hoping that we could have been giving this award to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for bringing Bush & Co. to justice for their illegal use of torture. Alas, things have moved slower in this regard than a progressive would hope. But we have to take progress when we can get it, even if it is but a small step forward. It's important to realize that there are some people making advances in the accountability department.

Kevin Zeese is one of those people. Here's video from his press conference announcing his group's efforts to have disbarred the lawyers who wrote the memos containing legal excuses and loopholes for torture:

As our own Christine Bowman writes:

It is not an eye for an eye, or a waterboard for a waterboard. In fact, it may better be described as a slap on the wrist. But a coalition of groups spearheaded by Voters For Peace and the Velvet Revolution, and represented at a D.C. press conference Monday by grass-roots activist and 2006 Green Party candidate Kevin Zeese, did move the accountability agenda forward by filing legal ethics complaints against 12 former Bush administration lawyers associated with providing legal justifications for torture. The disciplinary complaints seeking disbarment were filed with Wallace E. "Gene" Shipp Jr., bar counsel for the District of Columbia.

Rescinding the licenses of the likes of John Yoo and Jay Bybee may only embarrass and force torture-tainted lawyers to earn their money as lecturers or cable news pundits instead of by continuing to practice law, but it is a grass-roots start down the long road towards Bush administration accountability. Citizens have found few paths other than through the ballot box, and even voting for Democrats has brought only mixed results.

Zeese seems to see this as the very least the U.S. legal system can do to right itself. He told The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, "If these guys aren't disbarred, it means that somebody who facilitates war crimes is meeting the legal ethics standards. That's disturbing if true... I think we're setting a pretty low standard."

Zeese is aware of the ethical gulch our country needs to cross and is willing to be the one to take that first legal step, which is why BuzzFlash wishes to honor him in our own little way, by awarding him with this week's Wings of Justice.

The wheels of justice do grind exceedingly slow. But the Wings of Justice Award identifies hope in the exceedingly small actions of barely-known patriots.

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Nominated by BuzzFlash staff. To see a full list of past Wings of Justice honorees, click here.

WINGS OF JUSTICE

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