NewsTrust - Law Enforcement - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

The Logic of the 9/11 Trials, the Madness of the Military Commissions

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Andy Worthington - Nov. 19 (Opinion) - the very existence of a two-tier judicial system should be enough to set alarm bells ringing, as it suggests - quite correctly, I believe - that the government is hedging its bets when it comes to justice, proceeding with federal court trials when it believes that it will secure successful prosecutions, and reserving the commissions for other cases in which it fears that it may fail, because the evidence is not only contaminated by the use of torture, but is also weak.

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Church Of Scientology Accused Of Torture And Forced Abortions In Australia

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:30:08 -0800

Huffington Post - Nov. 18 -

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The right's nonsensical arguments against trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York.

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Dahlia Lithwick - Nov. 17 (Opinion) - Opposition to the Obama administration's plan to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates in a federal court in New York City is hardening into two camps. One is concerned that we may be unwittingly playing into the terrorists' hands. The other is incensed that we already have. What both camps share, besides a kind of unhinged logic and complete disregard for the legal process, is an obsessive fascination with the accused. The result is a broad willingness to sacrifice our commitment to legal principles in favor of the symbolic satisfaction of crushing the hopes and dreams of a motley group of criminals.

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The Right's textbook "surrender to terrorists"

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - This is literally true: the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists." It's the same fear they've been spewing for years. As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

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Accept the facts – and end this futile 'war on drugs'

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - The prohibitionists are – from the best intentions and the highest motives – unleashing a catastrophe. Human beings have been finding ways to get stoned or high since we lived in caves. In our attempt to end this natural impulse, we have created a problem worse than drug use itself.

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Gestapo Knocks at Door of Northwestern University Journalism School

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Judge H. Lee Sarokin - Oct. 25 (Opinion) - I am always offended and annoyed with the labeling of some recent conduct or person with Nazism or Hitler or drawing analogies with the Holocaust...

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A historian's account of Democrats and Bush-era war crimes

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Oct. 08 (Opinion) - this Lieberman amendment, which is now likely to pass, undermines all of that and -- as EBay founder Pierre Omidyar put it today -- its central purpose is to "legalize suppression" of evidence of American war crimes.

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Al Qaeda's on its way out

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By C.M. Sennott - Sep. 30 (Opinion) - The image of Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan-born bus driver from Denver and now a terror suspect, embodies the complex truths of where we are right now in the struggle against terrorism.

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Did California police use a Taser on an unarmed, legless man in a wheelchair?

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:14:32 -0700

McClatchy - Sep. 21 -

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Fear was no excuse to condone torture

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Miami Herald - By Charles C. Krulak, Joseph P. Hoar - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster. But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

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Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Aug. 20 (Opinion) - Astonishingly, many politicians seem to think that we should lead the world in prisons, not in health care or education. The United States is anomalous among industrialized countries in the high proportion of people we incarcerate; likewise, we stand out in the high proportion of people who have no medical care — and partly as a result, our health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are unusually poor.

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Cheney's New Gambit

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Ray McGovern - Aug. 16 (Opinion) - The stenographers of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) are missing the most obvious explanation for former Vice President Dick Cheney’s widely reported “disappointment” with former President George W. Bush on the issue of pardons -- self-interest.

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A summer of race talk

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Root - By Sherrilyn A. Ifill - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - Judge Sonia Sotomayor is the first Latina Supreme Court justice. The Cambridge police dropped the charges against Professor Henry “Skip” Gates, an action supported by the mounting evidence that he was the subject of a false and racially charged arrest.

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Panetta Pleads for No CIA Punishment

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Melvin A. Goodman - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - The ideological partnership between the Washington Post and the Central Intelligence Agency is becoming despicable. For the past several weeks, the Post has carried a series of editorial and op-eds that were designed to prevent the release of the Justice Department memoranda that permitted the use of CIA torture and abuse and to prevent any rigorous examination of these practices that went beyond the permitted guidelines.

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Cheney's Fondness for the Dark Side

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Consortium News - By Sherwood Ross - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - In (Bush lawyer) John Yoo’s version of events, writes Jane Mayer in her book The Dark Side that “the impetus to break out of Geneva’s strictures…came from the CIA. Many at the Agency, however, saw this differently, suggesting it was Cheney and his lawyer, (David) Addington, who pushed the Agency to take the path toward torture.” A few days after 9/11 Cheney observed the CIA had gone over “to the dark side,” but whether he starred in the role of Darth Vader needs to be established or denied.

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Hillary Clinton demands accountability for war crimes

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - As we send murderous, crusading civilian units around the world to accompany our invading armies -- while ushering a regime of torture wherever we go -- and then announce we will only Look to the Future, Not the Past, when their crimes are exposed (despite our best efforts to keep them concealed), do we actually expect anyone to take these sermons seriously?

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Welcome to the ‘Club’

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Charles M. Blow - Jul. 25 (Opinion) - For many black men, a negative, sometimes racially charged, encounter with a policeman is a far-too-common rite of passage.

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All right, everybody, let’s cool off

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Derrick Z. Jackson - Jul. 25 (Opinion) - Crowley should never have arrested Gates for being upset at lingering police presence in his home, having proved it was his. But Crowley’s history is that he’s not a rogue policeman. Gates calling him one on national TV Wednesday blurred the line between the act and the man.

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Black officer at scholar’s home supports arrest

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Bob Salsberg - Jul. 24 (Press Release) - CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A black police officer who was at Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s home when the black Harvard scholar was arrested says he fully supports how his white fellow officer handled the situation.

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Editorial - Slain for Daring to Report - NYTimes.com

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jul. 17 (Editorial) - New York TimesSlain for Daring to ReportNew York TimesThe murder of Natalya Estemirova, an investigator into the brutality of Chechnya's Kremlin-backed regime, has the grisly signature of a long string of murder with impunity in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Ms. Estemirova was kidnapped by gunmen Wednesday in ...Lawless Atmosphere Cited in Death of Russian JournalistVoice of AmericaAnother Death in RussiaWall Street JournalDimitry Medvedev rejects claim Chechen leader ordered killingguardian.co.ukBBC News?-Reuters?-The Associated Pressall 467 news articles??

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Congress must assert its right to oversee the intelligence community

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - Jul. 14 (Editorial) - U.S. intelligence operations require secrecy and operational flexibility, but the programs do not operate outside or above the law. All Americans need to know whose authority was invoked by Vice President Cheney when he ordered Congress be denied information the law says it must receive. Congress and the White House can stay focused on the issues before them. These are not political hunting expeditions, but specific grievances grounded in a legal system others actively chose to ignore.

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Now Can We Investigate?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - By William Rivers Pitt - Jul. 13 (Opinion) - Half a dozen times since his inauguration, President Obama has seen his agenda depth-charged by a report on some nefarious activity by the previous administration. Not only have his plans and intentions been derailed by these reports - whether they be about torture, government secrecy, indefinite detention, or whatever else - he has himself become culpable for the damage done by either trying to ignore these transgressions or by adopting them himself.

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John McCain: Accountability For Torture is That People's Reputations Have Been Harmed Very Badly

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Crooks and Liars - Jul. 13 (Opinion) - GREGORY: But where's the accountability? McCAIN: Well, the accountability, obviously, is that people's reputations have been harmed very badly. The question is, is do we want America's image harmed more by dragging this out further and further? You've got to

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The Obama Justice System

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Glenn Greenwald - Jul. 08 (Opinion) - Due process is seen as window dressing to enable to President to detain whoever he wants, for as long as he wants.

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The Patriot's Guide to Legalization

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Kevin Drum - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Maybe the war against pot is about to get a lot uglier. After all, in the 1920s, Prohibition gave us Al Capone and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and that was over plain old whiskey and rum. Are we about to start paying the same price for marijuana?

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