Five federal judges experienced with surveillance requests appeared Tuesday before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in support of committee chairman Arlen Specter's proposal to require the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret panel established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) , to conduct regular reviews of the National Security Administration's warrantless surveillance program . [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced Tuesday that the US Department of Defense (DOD) has dropped its appeal of a September District Court order requiring it to publicly release more photographs showing detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison, pursuant to an ACLU request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) . A supposedly-full [...]
Court-appointed lawyers for Zacarias Moussaoui rested the case of their headstrong and sometimes fractious client in federal court Tuesday by reading recorded statements from five al Qaeda leaders to show that contrary to Moussaoui's own testimony , he was not in fact slated to participate in the Sept. 11 attacks . Instead, the attorneys sought [...]
The Miami federal judge presiding over the trial of terror suspect Jose Padilla Tuesday placed tight restrictions on disclosure of evidence containing classified material. US District Judge Marcia Cooke's order under the Classified Information Procedures Act is primarily intended to prevent the public from gaining access to US national security secrets – including interrogations evidence, [...]
A three-judge panel of the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) violated s. 2511 of US Code Title 18 by disclosing an illegally obtained tape to reporters in 1996. The majority found that McDermott violated the rights of Representative John Boehner (R-OH) who was heard on the taped [...]
Leading Tuesday's environmental law news, Judge Saundra Armstrong of the US District Court for the Northern District of California has ruled that the US Bureau of Reclamation must leave more water in the Klamath River basin to ensure survival of the threatened Coho salmon . The river runs from northern California to the Oregon coast [...]
Most of the eight US Supreme Court justices hearing oral arguments Tuesday in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld appeared skeptical of the Bush administration's contention that special military tribunals established by the President not adhering to either standard US military procedure or the Geneva Convention can be used to prosecute suspected terrorists as war criminals. Salim Hamdan [...]
A delegation of Algerian officials made the country's first visit to the US military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in mid-March to evaluate the conditions of 26 Algerian citizens being held there, according to a report published Tuesday in Algeria's El Watan newspaper. Representatives of the Algerian ministries of defense, foreign affairs and justice made [...]
A federal judge Tuesday dismissed three counts against former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling and one count against company founder Kenneth Lay , shortly after the prosecution rested in the fraud and conspiracy case against the pair. According to Skilling's attorney, US District Judge Sim Lake dismissed one count of wire fraud and two counts of [...]
Transit workers, postal staff, teachers and media employees went on strike and more than a million people demonstrated across France Tuesday as part of escalating protests against the First Employment Contract (CPE) , a contentious labor law passed by the French parliament earlier this month that allows employers to fire workers under 26 years old [...]
