civil liberties

Huge news from Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn. The Obama administration fears that congressional prerogative is going to get in the way of closing Guantanamo Bay by January. So its answer is to cut Congress out of the decision-making and set up a system of “prolonged detention” for an estimated half of Guantanamo detainees it [...]

The media have overlooked substance and context to focus on her style, but Judge Sonia Sotomayor has provided a window into her views on executive power and national security along the way.

Adam Serwer at TAPPED, reading reports of how White House aide John Brennan is pushing to stop declassifications of torturous CIA interrogations, observes:
Brennan may have withdrawn his name from consideration as head of the CIA, but he’s clearly winning the battle over who has more influence with the president. Civil libertarians didn’t beat Brennan. He [...]

“Has the Obama administration changed the legal rules for detaining suspects in the war on terrorism,” asked Harvard law professor Noah Feldman in an op-ed in The New York Times today, “or is it continuing in the footsteps of the Bush administration?”
As I wrote when the administration first announced it would stop using the term [...]

I really hate writing posts about the media. It seems to me that complaining about the press is a distraction from engaging with the actual issues at hand. Yes, more often than not the press sucks, everyone knows it, the point is made, we factor it into our reasoning and now we can move on, [...]

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) might be hating on Leon Panetta, but Rep. Rush Holt, the progressive New Jersey congressman who chairs the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, just put out this statement welcoming Panetta’s impending nomination to head the CIA:

As Daphne blogged earlier today, Dawn Johnsen of Indiana University Law School is going to helm the Justice Dept.’s Office of Legal Counsel, a crucial position for the balance between civil liberties and national security. (Under the Bush administration, it became the go-to office for rubber-stamping the legality of torture, indefinite detention and warrantless surveillance.) [...]

By now you’ve probably heard that the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case of the sole legal U.S. resident detained indefinitely — yes, that means potentially forever — without charges, right here on U.S. soil.  All because President Bush decided on his own authority, that this 28-year-old father of five, who was then [...]

It’s a Washington tradition. Outgoing administrations try to ram through a slew of new federal regulations. But the Bush administration has expanded on this, seeking to push through at least 90 changes that can affect the health and safety of millions. Here are five examples.

Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, has an important reason for Americans to vote Democratic this year: Accountability for war crimes.
Speaking in Florida on Wednesday, as the political world focused on his Republican counterpart, vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden said a Democratic administration would use a “fine-toothed comb” to investigate — [...]