obama administration

The influential Center for American Progress, which has close ties to the Obama administration, is now calling on President Obama to push back the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center to July. That’s despite the president’s day-two directive to close the notorious prison by January. Closure has been impeded by the inability to send [...]

Depending on who you ask, the sentencing yesterday of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri to eight years in prison is either evidence that the civilian federal judicial system can successfully handle terror cases, or evidence that it’s a dismal failure.
Yesterday, Jonathan Hafetz, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented Al-Marri in his challenge to military [...]

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones reminds us that the Obama administration promised earlier this month to do its best to review about 224 more documents that might be responsive to the American Civil Liberties Union’s Freedom of Information Act longstanding requests for documents relating to the torture, abuse and death of detainees in U.S. custody.
Somehow, [...]

The Obama administration is making plans to send about 25 detainees from the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay to federal prisons, to be tried in civilian federal courts, according to Newsweek.
As TWI reported last week, the biggest ongoing controversy is over where to try the five suspected 9/11 co-conspirators. The administration has said it prefers [...]

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) today blasted the Obama administration, as well as some of her colleagues in the House and Senate, for including a provision in the Homeland Security Appropriations Bill that would amend the Freedom of Information Act to exempt from disclosure photos depicting the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody.
After the jump, Slaughter’s [...]

Human rights experts say there is a serious risk that some of the Guantanamo detainees cleared for release could face persecution or torture.

Although the Obama administration’s much-anticipated new policy on the use of the so-called “state secrets” privilege, announced this morning, has drawn some praise, civil liberties lawyers and other critics of the use of the privilege don’t think it solves the problem.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is digging in on the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s claims that the administration is hiding the true cost of a climate bill, despite the fact that documents they cite do not reflect any actual legislation.
“The current administration claims to be the most transparent in American history, yet it’s been hiding a report [...]

Ever wonder why loan modifications haven’t become the silver bullet that would solve the foreclosure crisis? Via Patrick.net, USA Today explains in simple terms a phenomenon TWI also has noted, when it comes to loan mods: Borrowers who can’t afford their mortgages and go looking for relief wind up with higher — not lower — [...]

Dr. Steven Miles, a professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School and faculty member of its Center for Bioethics, for years tried to track the deaths of “war on terror” detainees being held in U.S. custody. The author of the book “Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity and America’s War on Terror,” published in 2006 [...]