Lawyers for the Barack Obama administration told a federal judge Monday that the U.S. government has authority to kill U.S. citizens whom the executive branch has unilaterally determined pose a threat to national security. That claim came in federal court in...
Guilty Plea for Child Fighter Averts ‘Publicity Nightmare’
With tongue in cheek, constitutional experts congratulated the U.S. government Tuesday for negotiating a plea deal with Guantanamo prisoner Omar Khadr, thus avoiding a trial in the military commission "puppet theater" of a defendant who was just 15 at the time of his...
WikiLeaks Paints Grim Picture of Iraqi Civilian Casualties
Two revelations await the reader of the WikiLeaks section dealing with civilian deaths in the Iraq War: Iraqis are responsible for most of these deaths, and the number of total civilian casualties is substantially higher than has been previously reported. There were...
More Iraqi Prison Abuses Exposed on WikiLeaks
The publication of a mother lode of secret field reports from the Iraq War is shining a bright light on heretofore unknown or underreported suspicions about the power of private security contractors and the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by their fellow Iraqis, often with...
US High Court to Weigh Ashcroft Detention Case
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear former Attorney General John Ashcroft's appeal of a lower court decision, which ruled that he could be held responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought the case...
Senate Urges Pentagon to Rein in Afghan Contractors
Failures in vetting, training, and supervising Defense Department private security contractors are putting U.S. and coalition troops as well as Afghan civilians at risk and unwittingly aiding Afghan militants by hiring security contractors provided by the Taliban and...
FBI Raids Seen as Political Retribution
Recent raids by federal agents on the homes and offices of peace activists are being viewed by civil libertarians and civil society groups as further proof that the U.S. is morphing into a "surveillance state" where the right to privacy and other constitutional...
Ashcroft’s Post-9/11 Roundups Spark Lawsuit
Hundreds of people who believe they were falsely detained and imprisoned by the Department of Justice in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks are now seeking redress through the U.S. courts. The exact number of detainees is unclear, as no lists were ever released...
Rendition Suit Heads for US High Court
In a move legal experts are calling unusual, the one-vote court majority that tossed out the lawsuit brought by five men who claim they were tortured under the "extraordinary rendition" program of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency departed from customary...
FBI: No Probable Cause Required For Surveillance
The bitter controversy over the building of a Muslim community center and mosque near the site of the terrorist attacks in New York on Sept. 11, 2001, is sparking new fears of government snooping on Islamic holy places – which it now claims it can do without a...