The US House Judiciary Committee approved the Military Commissions Act Wednesday 20-19, but only after its Republican leadership harnessed enough votes to overcome an initial 20-17 vote that would have killed the legislation. Key Republican members were missing when the first vote was taken. The House bill closely follows the controversial draft legislation President Bush [...]
US Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty argued against the pending Free Flow of Information Act of 2006 during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, saying that a federal shield law for reporters will hinder national security investigations by encouraging people to leak classified information if reporters are protected from revealing their sources. In [...]
An Iraqi woman who attempted to detonate a suicide bomb as part of the 2005 deadly hotel bombings in Amman was sentenced to death Thursday by a Jordanian military court. Sajida al-Rishawi was convicted along with six others who were tried in absentia of conspiracy to carry out a terrorist act causing death and destruction [...]
Clarence Hill , who was convicted of the 1982 murder of a police officer, was executed Wednesday in Florida after the US Supreme Court denied his request to stay the execution. Five justices voted to refuse the stay; Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens would have granted the stay of execution. Hill filed a petition [...]
The Hong Kong Court of Appeal Wednesday upheld a 2005 ruling that laws prohibiting gay sex are unconstitutional and discriminatory and violate Hong Kong's Basic Law and the Bill of Rights . The law in the former British colony, now a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, authorizes life sentences for men [...]
JURIST Special Guest Columnist Jonathan Hafetz, Associate Counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, says that the Bush administration’s post-9/11 detainee policies – most recently evidenced in the proposed military commissions bill that would severely limit the habeas corpus power of the federal courts – are a recipe [...]
A federal judge Wednesday reinstated a 2001 ban on road construction in almost a third of US forests, ruling that the Bush administration did not conduct appropriate environmental research before suspending the rule and giving states the authority to manage their own forests. The original Roadless Area Conservation Rule was implemented by former US President [...]
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that a program in San Diego County which uses peace officers to search the homes of welfare applicants without having warrants does not violate constitutional bars against unreasonable searches or invasion of privacy. In Tuesday's 2-1 decision, the court said [...]
The 14 "high-value" terror suspects recently transferred from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay are expected to face Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearings in the next two to three months, according to Navy Capt. Phil Waddingham, director of the US Defense Department's Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants. Among the [...]
The US House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday 228-196 that would require voters to present valid photo ID cards when they head to the polls to vote in federal elections starting in 2008, thereby amending the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 . By 2010, under the bill, voters would have to present identification [...]
