Since the dying days of the Bush administration, when the Supreme Court savaged the indifference of the executive branch and of Congress towards the cruel mess they had created at Guantánamo, by ensuring that the prisoners had constitutionally guaranteed habeas corpus rights, it has, sadly, all been downhill when it comes to judicial oversight of [...]
The odyssey of Abdul Aziz Naji has taken many terrible twists and turns since he was seized in Pakistan in May 2002, tortured at Bagram, then sent to Guantanamo, were he was formally cleared of any charges in a review of prisoner status last year. He was forcibly repatriated to Algeria on July 20, despite his fears of being harmed by Islamic forces or the government upon his return. Such forcible repatriation of a prisoner or detainee who fears persecution or worse is a violation of international law. This principle of non-refoulement, or non-return is specifically forbidden in the UN Convention Against Torture and Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
Eighty-five percent of Democrats and 76 percent of Republicans tell pollsters when asked that they oppose the Supreme Court’s decision in “Citizens United” which lifted limits on corporate political spending. I’m willing to bet that at least those same percentages would tell you the decision violates the U.S. Constitution. And I would bet that if you explained to people that the CU decision was based on the ideas that spending money on elections is speech and that corporations claim the First Amendment right to free speech which was meant for people, the numbers would increase.
When it comes to dealing with the thorny question of how to close Guantánamo, the remaining prisoners have been caught between two competing systems since President Obama took office last January, and the result, to put it mildly, has been confusing. Under President Bush, prisoners were cleared for release by military review boards, established to review the supposed evidence against them, and to determine whether they constituted an ongoing threat to the US. This appeared to be a maddeningly arbitrary system, but it led to the release of hundreds of the prisoners.
¿Plata o plomo? Colombian and Mexican drug gangs ask government officials, judges and police officers which they prefer, “silver or lead,” when offering bribes and threatening violence. The U.S. Supreme Court decision granting corporations the same free speech rights as natural persons allows them to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections and public affairs. Corporations, foreign and domestic, can now force politicians to choose silver or lead when supporting or opposing corporate and foreign power interests.
Congresswoman Donna Edwards and constitutional law professor Jamie Raskin speak out against Thursday’s Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC and call for a mass movement of people to support a constitutional amendment. Here’s a news release announcing the effort: A coalition of public interest organizations strongly condemned today’s ruling by the US Supreme [...]
Does the United States Constitution allow Congress to force people to purchase a product (health insurance) from a private corporation, and fine them or tax them if they refuse? The answer is a matter of debate, but there is little dispute that such an act of Congress would be unprecedented. Sheldon Laskin, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Baltimore Law School who has argued that the Constitution forbids such a move, describes the new and dangerous can of worms it would open up.
Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights asked the Supreme Court Friday to allow seven men who remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay despite being cleared for release to be released into the United States when there is no other remedy available. This will be the first time the Court hears a Guantánamo case since it decided the landmark cases brought by CCR and co-counsel, Boumediene v. Bush, in June 2008, and the first time the Obama administration will defend a Guantánamo case before the high court.
US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly struck another decisive blow to the credibility of the Bush administration’s detention policies at Guantánamo by granting the habeas corpus petition of Kuwaiti prisoner Fouad al-Rabia, a 50-year old aeronautical engineer and a father of four who had been accused of fundraising for Osama bin Laden and running a supply depot for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains.
The federal Appeals Court decision to toss a lawsuit claiming contractors tortured detainees in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison is what you’d expect from a tyranny. The new ruling brushes off the charges by 212 Iraqis who said they or their late husbands were abused by U.S. personnel at Abu Ghraib. The suit charged private security [...]
