Gary Buseck : "Mitt Romney is about to leave the Massachusetts governorship and enter a presidential primary campaign built almost exclusively around his opposition to the now recognized right of liberty and equality under the Massachusetts constitution for two loving people to marry. While he's certainly entitled to his angst over the legislature's vote to [...]
Jackson Chin : "Plaintiffs counsel have challenged local ordinances in Hazleton, PA based on their unconstitutional and ambitious sweep in attempting to regulate immigrant residents. Misguided at best, these laws are preempted by and violate a number of federal laws. The passage and defense of such local anti-immigrant laws are part of an organized effort [...]
The US government agreed to pay $2 million Wednesday in a settlement agreement with Brandon Mayfield, the attorney arrested and detained for two weeks in May 2004 after the FBI mistakenly established that his fingerprints matched those found on a bag containing detonators used in the 2004 Madrid terrorist train bombings . Mayfield, a Muslim [...]
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) has settled fraud allegations under the False Claims Act , the US Justice Department said Wednesday, and has agreed to pay the US $8 million for allegedly overcharging the Army for logistical support it provided between 1999 and 2000. The DOJ alleged that KBR double-billed the military and [...]
Significant racial and ethnic discrimination and violence persist in European Union countries, according to a report released by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) Tuesday. According to the report, victimized groups include asylum seekers, refugees, undocumented migrants, Roma gypsies , Jews and Muslims. Despite identification of the problem, the EUMC detailed the [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour told the UN Human Rights Council Wednesday in the aftermath of a controversial trip to the Middle East that "the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is grave and worsening, within a general climate of impunity." She called on Israel to properly investigate 19 Palestinian [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Massachusetts v. EPA , 05-1120, a case where 12 states and several environmental groups are challenging an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determination that it does not have the authority under the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate the emission of "greenhouse gases," such as carbon dioxide, [...]
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Wednesday urged the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to avoid the "political maneuvering" that plagued the rights body's predecessor, the UN Human Rights Commission , telling the 47 member states that their role was to combat human rights violations even if regional allies were opposed to those efforts. In a statement [...]
The South African National Council of Provinces has approved the Civil Unions Bill , legislation that would make South Africa the first African nation to recognize same-sex unions if President Thabo Mbeki approves the measure. The lower house of the nation's parliament approved the bill earlier this month in a 230-41 vote. While religious leaders [...]
Bolivian President Evo Morales signed a land redistribution bill Tuesday that he hopes will allow his government to give 77,000 square miles of unproductive land to the country's poor. The president signed the bill amidst shouts of approval from more than 3,000 Indian supporters who may gain land from the new measure, which is part [...]
