Christopher Gacek : "In reaction to the possibility that Hawaiian courts would mandate same-sex marriage for that state in the mid-1990s, Congress enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA). The vote in the US Senate was 85-14; in the US House of Representatives it was 342-67. President Bill Clinton signed DoMA into law on September [...]
Chief of staff to former US secretary of state Colin Powell Lawrence Wilkerson criticized US terrorism detention practices Thursday, saying that authorities were holding innocent civilians as terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Wilkerson's comments echoed earlier statements he made on the blog Washington Notes, entitled "Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay" , published [...]
The Brazilian Supreme Court on Thursday confirmed the rights of indigenous peoples to land on the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation and set out 19 rules to guide court in similar cases in the future. The 10 to 1 ruling will permit the expulsion of the 200 rice farmers currently living and working on the [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Thursday granted a preliminary injunction against a federal rule that permits the possession of "concealed, loaded and operable" hand guns in national parks and wildlife refuges in accordance with state laws. The rule was a enacted late in the term of former [...]
US Attorney General Eric Holder announced Thursday new guidelines for complying with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) . The new guidelines, designed to increase transparency in government, will rescind the Attorney General's FOIA Memorandum of October 12, 2001, which stated that the Department of Justice would defend decisions to withhold records "unless they lack [...]
The US House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that would tax bonuses given to employees of companies that received money from government stimulus programs at 90 percent. The bill, which was passed by a vote of 328-93 , was drafted and voted on in reaction to large bonus payments made in the past week [...]
The US Senate on Thursday confirmed Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan as Solicitor General by a vote of 61-31. Kagan, the first woman to hold the office, faced opposition from Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings last month for her role in a lawsuit against the Department of Defense challenging the [...]
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Thursday that it would conduct an internal investigation into reports that Israeli soldiers have committed war crimes against Palestinian civilians. The announcement follows soldiers' reports of civilian killings and vandalism under liberal rules of engagement during a recent operation in the Gaza Strip. It also came on the same [...]
The Chinese government on Friday detained a former soldier who has called for an investigation into the 1989 killings of pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square . Chinese human rights organization Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch (CRLW) said that Zhang Shijun, a former member of the Chinese army's 162nd motorized infantry division, has been detained (CRLW [...]
Iranian blogger Omidreza Mirsayafi reportedly committed suicide Wednesday after serving one month of a 30-month prison sentence for insulting Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei . Both the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHR) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reported that Mirsayafi had been suffering from depression , with ICHR reporting that Mirsayafi [...]
