michael ratner

After Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and his Judiciary subcommittee officially announced its intent to hold a hearing on the Office of Legal Counsel torture memos next week, I asked Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of “The Prosecution of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book”, what evidence he would [...]

It was an odd but refreshing spectacle, to see U.S.-based human rights lawyers arguing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the United States has effectively insulated itself from accountability for torture and war crimes, and ought to be pushed by an international body to do better.

I’m glad to see that somebody isn’t just taking at face value Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s recent statements that Bush administration officials who approved the use of torture shouldn’t be prosecuted and needn’t be pardoned  because they all reasonably believed their actions were lawful.
On Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Constitution, [...]