U.S.

While one group of leading conservatives is pressing Republican senators to filibuster Obama’s nominee for a seat on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, others are opposing the filibuster attempt.
The Hill reports that 24 leading conservative, led by former Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese, have signed a memo urging a fillibuster, saying “Judge [David] [...]

Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio tweeted this morning that he’d met with Vice President Joe Biden, who was in Phoenix fundraising for Democratic members of Congress who could face tough Republican challengers in 2010. Biden was also touting the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Curiously, the meeting was not listed on the vice [...]

The International Center for Transitional Justice usually focuses on bringing to light and holding perpetrators accountable for such heinous crimes as genocide, mass murder and systematic torture, often in far-off war-torn countries with dismal human rights records.
So it’s significant that today they’ve released a report calling on the United States to follow its legal obligation [...]

Attorney General Eric Holder just announced that he will seek the death penalty for the five 9/11 terror suspects. They will be tried in a New York federal court, as reported earlier this morning.

Praising an Italian court’s recent ruling that CIA agents broke the law in an extraordinary rendition case, The New York Times today highlights a growing phenomenon that hasn’t received sufficient attention: European courts appear more willing than their American counterparts to enforce the laws protecting basic human and civil rights.

The Justice Department released more documents — or, at least, less-redacted documents — late Friday to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of the government’s obligation in a pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
These latest documents provide a glimpse of the early struggles between the FBI and the Pentagon over just how to conduct [...]

A four-day sweep conducted last November in Arizona by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents looking for immigrant fugitives and criminals resulted primarily in the arrests of immigrants who were neither criminals nor fugitives, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona has found.
The operation was supposed to be part of an ICE program to deport dangerous [...]

When I wrote my earlier post about the group of illustrious Americans urging the Obama administration to close Guantanamo and bring suspected terrorists to justice in U.S. federal courts, I neglected to mention that Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), joined by Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.), is today pushing a measure [...]

Fouad al Rabiah, a Kuwaiti Airways engineer accused of being an aide to Osama bin Laden who recently won his habeas corpus case in federal court, is a step closer to going home. McClatchy newspapers reports that the 50-year-old father of four was moved to the part of the Guantanamo detention center reserved for detainees [...]

A bipartisan group of more than 120 judges, prosecutors, diplomats, former members of Congress and high-level military and government officials yesterday released a proposed plan for closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and trying all suspected terrorists in civilian federal court.
“Some have opposed the closing of Guantanamo because they believe there is no viable alternative [...]