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Senators Press Holder to Declassify Key Facts about Patriot Act

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

Salem-News.com - Nov. 19 (News Report) - We believe that the information we referenced in those paragraphs – specifically about the use of section 215 – is essential to understanding the full scope of the PATRIOT Act, which is about to be debated in Congress. As we said in June, if you have concerns about declassifying the specific language contained in our letter, we ask that you work with us to find language that conveys enough information to allow for an informed public debate on the PATRIOT Act’s reauthorization

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Would U.S. Need To Read Bin Laden His Miranda Rights?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

All Things Considered - By Frank James - Nov. 18 (News Report) - Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to give a federal court trial instead of a military commission hearing to five Guantanamo detainees the government has linked to the 9/11 attacks has led to criticism that the Obama Administration is transforming the war on terror from a military to law-enforcement affair. This has led some critics to wonder if captured terrorist suspects would have to be read their Miranda rights on being captured by U.S. military or law enforcement representatives.

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Dallas police chief: Dozens of tickets issued for not speaking English

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dallas Morning News - By Scott Goldstein - Oct. 23 (News Report) - Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle said this afternoon that his officers have written at least 39 citations to people over the past three years for not speaking English

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Appeals court rules against Ashcroft in 9/11 case

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Associated Press - Sep. 04 (News Report) - A federal appeals court delivered a stinging rebuke Friday to the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 detention policies, ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held liable for people who were wrongfully detained as material witnesses after 9/11. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government's improper use of material witnesses after Sept. 11 was "repugnant to the Constitution and a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history

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Canada court says its officials knew U.S. abused detainee

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

McClatchy - By Carol Rosenberg | Miami Herald - Aug. 14 (News Report) - Canada must seek the immediate return of Toronto-born Guantanamo captive Omar Khadr rather than await the outcome of his U.S. military trial because American troops mistreated the alleged teen terrorist and Canadian officials knew about it, Canada's appeals court ruled Friday.

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Revelations About the Nominee

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ann Gerhart - Jul. 15 (News Report) - Sonia Sotomayor speaks slowly, deliberately and at length, and she has a ready sense of humor.

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Obama Goes to Bat for Bush Wiretap Program

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Bob Egelko - Jul. 15 (News Report) - President Obama is adamant about maintaining the secrecy of a wiretapping program authorized by George W. Bush, an administration lawyer told a federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday.

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Sidebar - Guilty by a 10-2 Vote - Efficient or Unconstitutional? - Series - NYTimes.com

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Adam Liptak - Jul. 07 (News Report) - “Twelve Angry Men” might have been a much shorter movie had it been set in Oregon. Instead of letting Juror No. 8, the lone holdout played by Henry Fonda, methodically convince his fellow jurors that there was good reason to doubt the defendant’s guilt, an Oregon jury might have just voted and been done with it. That’s because Oregon is one of only two states that does not require juries to reach unanimous verdicts in criminal cases. Like Louisiana, it allows convictions by a vote of 10 to 2. In a pair of decisions in 1972, the Supreme Court said that was all right, that the Constitution does not require states to insist on unanimity.

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Obama issues signing statement on $106B war bill

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Hill - By Michael O'Brien - Jun. 26 (News Report) - President George W. Bush was heavily criticized for his use of signing statements, declaring he'd ignore some elements of legislation by invoking presidential prerogative. The Obama administration announced in the statement it would disregard provisions of the legislation that, among other things, would compel the Obama administration to pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require the Treasury department to report to Congress on the activities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

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Michael Scheuer -- Osama, Obama and Torture

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

Washington Post - By Michael Scheuer - Apr. 24 (News Report) - So if the above worst-case scenario ever comes to pass, Americans will have at least two things from which to take solace, even after the loss of major cities and tens of thousands of countrymen. First, they will know that their president believes that those losses are a small price to pay for stopping interrogations and making foreign peoples like us more. And second, they will see Osama bin Laden's shy smile turn into a calm and beautiful God-is-Great grin.

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Pressure Grows to Investigate Interrogations

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Peter Baker, Scott Shane - Apr. 21 (News Report) - "The administration has...not ruled out prosecuting anyone who exceeded the legal guidelines, and officials have discussed appointing a special prosecutor."

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US tried to gag Binyam Mohamed with plea bargain

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Nick Allen - Mar. 27 (News Report) - He would also have been required to abandon a legal attempt to obtain documents which he believed could prove his innocence. Clive Stafford Smith, Mr Mohamed's lawyer, said: "This reflects the way the US government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture.

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U.S. Won’t Label Terror Suspects as ‘Combatants’

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By William Glaberson - Mar. 14 (News Report) - But the Department of Justice filing portrayed the adjustment of the government’s position in expansive terms. In a public statement accompanying its filing, the department said the government’s position had been devised to adhere closely to the requirements of the international law of war, longstanding principles that permit enemy fighters to be held until the completion of hostilities.

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Miami-Dade schools can yank book on Cuba

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Miami Herald - By Kathleen McGrory, Jay Weaver, Jennifer Lebovich - Feb. 06 (News Report) - A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Miami-Dade School Board did not violate the Constitution in 2006 when it removed a controversial children's book about Cuba from the public schools' library system. In a 2-1 decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said the board did not breach the First Amendment, and ordered a Miami federal judge to lift a preliminary injunction that had allowed Vamos a Cuba to be checked out from school libraries. The majority opinion supported the School Board's authority to set educational standards in Miami-Dade, saying the bilingual book, part of a library series on 24 nations, presented an ''inaccurate'' view of life in Cuba under its former leader, Fidel Castro.

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After the Imperial Presidency

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Jonathan Mahler - Nov. 09 (Special Report) - The story of the United States is in many ways the story of the push and pull between the executive and legislative branches. Consider just the last half-century or so.

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Legislators Using Law As Shield In Probes

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Carrie Johnson - Nov. 01 (News Report) - A constitutional clause designed to protect members of Congress from abusive or harassing lawsuits is increasingly being used by lawmakers as a shield in public corruption investigations, frustrating investigators even as the FBI attempts to police wrongdoing at a pace not seen since the Watergate scandal.

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Appeals Courts Pushed to Right by Bush Choices

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Charlie Savage - Oct. 29 (Special Report) - After a group of doctors challenged a South Dakota law forcing them to inform women that abortions “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being” -- using exactly that language -- President Bush’s appointees to the federal appeals courts took control.

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17 at Guantanamo ordered released

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Hope Yen - Oct. 08 (News Report) - In a stern rebuke of the government, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina said it would be wrong to continue holding the detainees since they are no longer considered enemy combatants. Known as Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurz), the men have been in custody for nearly seven years. Over the objections of government lawyers, Urbina ordered their release in Washington, D.C., by Friday. It was the first court-ordered release of Guantanamo detainees since the prison camp opened in 2002. "Because the Constitution prohibits indefinite detentions without cause, the continued detention is unlawful," Urbina said, prompting cheers and applause from local Uighur residents and human rights activists who packed into the courtroom.

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Voter Registration by Students Raises Cloud of Consequences - NYTimes.com

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Tamar Lewin - Sep. 08 (News Report) - The widespread practice of students' registering to vote at their college address has set off a fracas in Virginia, a battleground state in the presidential election.

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Prop. 8 not retroactive, Jerry Brown says

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Bob Egelko - Aug. 05 (News Report) - In another development Monday, the California Catholic Conference, representing Catholic bishops, endorsed Prop. 8, declaring that "same-sex unions are not the same as opposite-sex unions" and that only a relationship that can produce children should be called marriage.

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Kinda Sorta Impeaching the President

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Dana Milbank - Jul. 25 (News Report) - House Democrats had called the session, given the anodyne title "Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations," to allow the left wing to vent its collective spleen.

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Court affirms online content law unconstitutional

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Joelle Tessler - Jul. 22 (News Report) - In its ruling Tuesday, the federal appeals court concluded that the Child Online Protection Act is unconstitutionally overly broad and vague. The court also ruled that the law violates the First Amendment because filtering technologies and other parental control tools offer a less restrictive way to protect children from inappropriate content online.

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Panel urges new law on government war powers

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - By Susan Cornwell - Jul. 08 (News Report) - The panel proposed a new law -- the "War Powers Consultation Act" -- that would require the president to consult with Congress before deploying U.S. troops into "significant armed conflict," defined as combat operations lasting, or expected to last, more than a week.

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Supreme Court Rejects Death Penalty for Child Rape

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:02:38 -0700

New York Times - By David Stout - Jun. 25 (News Report) - Washington - The Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, on Wednesday that sentencing someone to death for raping a child is unconstitutional, assuming that the victim is not killed.

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Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal in Civilian Courts

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Stout - Jun. 13 (News Report) - Foreign terrorism suspects held at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba have constitutional rights to challenge their detention there in United States courts, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, on Thursday in a historic decision on the balance between personal liberties and national security.

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