Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, sent a letter to key Obama administration officials today asking for more information about reports that China is blocking shipments of rare earth minerals to the United States.
The letter is addressed to Energy More…
Department of Defense officials are expected to sign off as early as this week on a report detailing just how dependent the U.S. military is on rare earth minerals. While the report has been in the works for over a year (it was required by Congress), it comes as rare More…
The government’s “state secrets” argument was back in full force yesterday, this time being made by the Justice Department before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in the ongoing case against Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary. Jeppesen is accused by five alleged victims More…
It took the Pentagon almost four months since a federal court ruled the government lacked sufficient evidence against Fouad al Rabia, but late last week — a day after the 50-year-old airline executive was flown home on a Kuwaiti royal jet — the U.S. military commission More…
The news on Friday that Blackwater Worldwide (now known as Xe Services) participated in clandestine CIA operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that included targeted killings, kidnapping and “extraordinary renditions” raised more questions than it answered.
After all, we already knew that the U.S. government has relied More…
The Supreme Court today threw out a ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that had ordered the government to disclose photographs of detainees being abused by U.S. officials. The ruling was widely expected, given that Congress had recently changed the Freedom of Information Act More…
This weekend’s news that inmates at the part of the prison at the U.S. Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan, run by Special Operations forces had suffered abuse sounded eerily reminiscent of the charges we’ve heard from previous prisoners victimized by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Joshua Partlow and Julie Tate at More…
Jeffrey Kaye at Truthout has a good piece today on the suicide — or murder? — of Yemeni Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh al Hanashi in June. It’s a powerful reminder of why human rights advocates, as well as U.S. military leaders, think it’s important to close that More…
Yesterday’s announcement that the Obama administration will try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 suspects in federal court has been hailed as everything from “an important step forward for justice” by Human Rights Watch to “a step backwards for the security of our country [that] puts Americans More…
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 More…
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