Leading Wednesday's environmental law news, the Washington State Senate has approved a measure that would allow the state to provide more water from the Columbia River basin for agriculture while protecting fish by ensuring water levels during spawning runs. For years, farmers in eastern Washington have battled conservationists in western Washington over the amount of [...]
Lawyers for the US Department of Justice have told the US Supreme Court that inmates held at Guantanamo Bay cannot challenge their detention by relying on the US Constitution because "the Constitution does not guarantee aliens held abroad a right to habeas corpus." The argument, put forth in the government's reply brief supporting the DOJ's [...]
Several members of the US House of Representatives Wednesday sharply criticized US internet companies for complying with the Chinese government's censorship requests at a Human Rights subcommittee hearing . The hearing was called after Microsoft , Yahoo! , Cisco and Google admitted that they have been voluntarily withholding from internet users in China certain political [...]
US Sen. Russell Feingold has begun one more perhaps-quixotic filibuster against renewal of the USA Patriot Act , claiming that new versions of key provisions offer only modest protection for civil liberties . Feingold has so far received little support on his latest attempt to block renewal of the far-reaching US anti-terror law, and US [...]
Admitted al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was unexpectedly allowed back into court Wednesday, despite a decision Tuesday by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema barring his presence Tuesday at ongoing jury selection proceedings for his sentencing trial . Moussaoui was barred from the courtroom after several disruptive outbursts over the course of jury selection proceedings, which [...]
Lawyers for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali , found guilty in November on charges of joining al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush, have asked a federal judge to delay his sentencing hearing, scheduled to begin Friday, so that they may investigate whether Abu Ali was a subject of warrantless eavesdropping by the National Security [...]
Facing a wartime enlistment deficiency, the US Army is granting special exceptions, called recruiting waivers , to an increasingly high percentage of recruits with criminal records or drug and alcohol problems. While the largest category of recruiting waivers were given to those facing medical problems, the largest increase in waivers was among recruits with misdemeanor [...]
New US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has chosen Adam G. Ciongoli, a former counselor to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft as one of his five law clerks. Ciongoli, 37, who currently serves as a senior vice president at Time Warner , clerked for Alito in 1995-1996 while Alito was a judge on US Court of [...]
A US federal judge in California has ruled that the state must change the drugs it uses when executing prisoners, because the current method may constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. US District Judge Jeremy Fogel said that he was concerned that prisoners were conscious during execution by lethal injection [...]
The Committee to Protect Journalists has deplored media repression in over 50 countries in its latest annual report . Highlighting unprecedented violence against reporters in the Middle East, it also condemned legal sanctions such as imprisonment and censorship, particularly decrying the crackdown on independent media in Iran and criticizing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's failure to [...]
