Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released a major new report detailing how the Bush Administration and other allied governments tortured and imprisoned opponents of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The prisoners were then rendered to Gaddafi’s own prisons where many of them were tortured. According to a HRW press release, the 154-page report, “Delivered into Enemy [...]
September 5, 2012 | Filed under
Torture |
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It could just be coincidence, of course. But just as a huge scandal unfolds in Washington over a seemingly botched guns-drug operation, and a possibly cover-up by Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice has announced a big crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in California, long the leader in the medical marijuana movement. Something [...]
October 8, 2011 | Filed under
Nation |
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Last Monday, on the very same day that the Obama administration gave up on Guantánamo, so too did the Supreme Court. As far as we know, it was not a choreographed climbdown — nor had money been offered by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to rehabilitate their legacies — but the effect was the [...]
April 14, 2011 | Filed under
Law |
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Since May 2009, when President Obama first bowed to Republican pressure on national security issues, and abandoned a plan by White House Counsel Greg Craig to rehouse on the US mainland a couple of cleared prisoners at Guantánamo who were at risk of torture if repatriated, it has been apparent that no principles are sufficiently [...]
April 6, 2011 | Filed under
Politics |
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A number of commentators have replied to Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement today that five suspects in the 9/11 attacks, including alleged Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will not be tried in civilian courts for the terrorist attacks almost ten years ago, but will be tried by President Obama’s revamped military commissions tribunals. What [...]
April 5, 2011 | Filed under
Law |
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For those of us seeking a grown-up debate about Guantánamo in the two years since President Obama came into office, the most troubling development has been the retrenchment of Republican opposition to the closure of the prison, backed up by alarming support for the pro-Guantánamo position by members of the President’s own party. Like a [...]
January 26, 2011 | Filed under
Law |
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With just two weeks to go before the ninth anniversary of the opening of the “War on Terror” prison at Guantánamo, almost everyone in a position of authority in the US has failed to resolve, in a satisfactory manner, the bitter legacy left by the Bush administration. In fact, to judge by two recent developments, [...]
December 28, 2010 | Filed under
Politics |
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How messed up is American politics? Well, here are a few clues. Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed a $1.1 trillion continuing resolution, which funds the government through to September 30 next year. As The Hill explained, the resolution was needed “because Congress failed to pass any of the 12 regular appropriations bills [...]
December 22, 2010 | Filed under
Politics |
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To listen to certain Republican critics of last week’s verdict in the federal court trial of the Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a former Guantánamo prisoner and a former CIA “ghost prisoner,” you would think that the jury had found him not guilty, and that he had been released onto the streets of New York. In [...]
November 24, 2010 | Filed under
Law |
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On national security issues, there are now two Americas. In the first, which existed from January to May 2009, the rule of law flickered briefly back to life after eight years of the Bush administration. In this first America, President Obama swept into office issuing executive orders promising to close Guantánamo and to uphold the [...]
November 18, 2010 | Filed under
Law |
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