Earlier this year when Arlen Specter was still a Republican, the Pennsylvania senator was among the harshest critics of Dawn Johnsen, the Indiana University law professor who is President Obama’s pick to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
The OLC is the office that housed such More…
The Obama administration today begins implementation of a new mandate to require all federal contractors to check the legal status of their employees to confirm their eligibility to work in the United States.
Developed by the Bush administration, the mandatory use of E-Verify, a computer system for employers More…
Today’s news that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear the claims of kidnapping and torture filed against the United States by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Khaled El-Masri, an innocent German citizen and car salesman subjected to the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program in 2003, More…
Throughout the Bush administration, Bush officials — including the president, as you can see here – consistently said that “this government does not torture people.” The Bush administration also promised that it doesn’t send prisoners to be tortured elsewhere.
The Obama administration is now saying the same thing. More…
As Newsweek reported Friday evening, the CIA inspector general report expected to be released on Monday reveals that the CIA staged mock executions to terrify terror suspects into talking. Regardless of whether interrogators got the information they were looking for, these actions were clearly against the law. It More…
Today’s news that Obama administration officials are touring a Michigan prison as a possible alternative location for detainees now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay could make life easier for some of their defense lawyers. But some say it raises as many concerns as it resolves.
“I think it’s More…
Seeking to dismiss criminal fraud charges against him, Raymond Azar, a 45-year-old Lebanese construction manager working for an English contractor, has charged that he was seized in Afghanistan and tortured before before being sent to Virginia to face trial.
Scott Horton reports on the case and provides links More…
Andrew Sullivan calls the reported impending torture probe by Attorney General Eric Holder “the worst of both worlds,” arguing that investigating only those who exceeded the overly-broad bounds set by the Bush administration “risks essentially legitimizing the torture it does not prosecute.”
On one hand, Sullivan’s right that More…
Despite President Obama’s previous criticism of former President George W. Bush’s “signing statements” that limit the president’s responsibility to comply with a bill passed by Congress, it turns out Obama has been doing much the same thing since he took office. Charlie Savage reported in The New York More…
Emails provided to the House Judiciary Committee at closed-door hearings yesterday reveal that President George W. Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove and other high-ranking officials in the former administration had even more influence over the politically charged firings of U.S. attorneys three years ago than has been previously revealed.
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