Thank god for our founding fathers — John Adams, honorable lawyer.

Whose values do the lawyers for Guantanamo detainees share? John Adams’, for one:

John Adams, in his old age, called his defense of British soldiers in 1770 “one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.” That’s quite a statement, coming as it does from perhaps the most underappreciated great man in American history.

The day after British soldiers mortally wounded five Americans on a cobbled square in Boston, thirty-four-year-old Adams was visted in his office near the stairs of the Town Office by a Boston merchant , James Forest. “With tears streaming from his eyes” (according to the recollection of Adams), Forest asked Adams to defend the soldiers and their captain, Thomas Preston. Adams understood that taking the case would not only subject him to criticism, but might jeopardize his legal practice or even risk the safety of himself and his family. But Adams believed deeply that every person deserved a defense, and he took on the case without hesitation. For his efforts, he would receive the modest sum of eighteen guineas.

So when Lynn Cheney’s group, keepamericasafe.com, suggests that there’s something un-American about the fact that lawyers in the Justice Department have defended Guantanamo detainees, the real question is this: why is keepamericasafe.com spouting the un-American propaganda that those accused of wrongdoing are not entitled to a defense and to requiring proof of their wrongdoing? In fact, as Adam Serwer reports,

Lt. Col. David Frakt, who has represented detainees both in military and civilian courts, said that the lawyers who secured due process rights for detainees were ultimately vindicated. “There is an assumption there that has proven to be a fallacy, which is that everyone at Guantanamo was a terrorist,” Frakt says, pointing to the fact that the government has lost three-quarters of the habeas petitions filed by detainees at Guantanamo. “What we have seen over and over and over is that the vast majority of detainees at Guantanamo are innocent.”

This is, in short, ugly, anti-American propaganda: