justice department

Michael Isikoff reports:
The federal judge who helped draft Justice Department memos on torture has set up a legal defense fund to pay the costs of defending against possible disciplinary or impeachment proceedings. Jay Bybee, a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in Las Vegas, quietly set up the fund last July following widespread news reports that [...]

Testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, Attorney General Eric Holder promised to produce the evidence, withheld by the Department of Justice, that some Democratic Senators believe is necessary for an informed debate on the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act.
As I reported yesterday, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Richard [...]

Responding to a question from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who’s asked frequently when the Justice Department will finally release the repeatedly delayed report by the Office of Professional Responsibility on the conduct of lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel under President Bush, Holder said that he expects it will be released by the end [...]

Greg Craig announced his departure as White House counsel on Friday, and you can Google for yourself all the Internet-dispersed acrimony and recriminations that his vexed tenure has inspired. This, however, via Marcy Wheeler, is news to me. Marc Ambinder:
The White House was also dissatisfied with Craig’s handling of political appointments, believing that Craig should [...]

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 [...]

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 unnecessarily at risk” by Senate Minority Leader [...]

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 [...]

The Senate just tabled the amendment proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would have prohibited use of Justice Department funds to prosecute the 9/11 terror suspects in U.S. federal courts. Effectively, that means it’s dead.
The amendment, S.A. 2669, to the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, would have forced the government to [...]