War on Terrorism

The FBI’s Right to Threaten Torture

by James Bovard October 26, 2007

A federal appeals court has concluded that an FBI agent must go to trial on charges he coerced a false confession out of a prime suspect in the 9/11 attacks. But the FBI still insists that its agent did nothing wrong. And the feds swayed the court to suppress that portion of a recent decision ...

Civil Liberties in Wartime (Video)

by Andrew Napolitano June 28, 2007

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano joined FOX News Channel in May 1998, and currently serves as a senior judicial analyst. He appears daily on The Big Story with John Gibson, co-hosts FOX and Friends once a week and is a regular on The O’Reilly Factor. Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court Judge in the history ...

Bush’s Tyranny Thwarted — For Now

by Sheldon Richman June 22, 2007

The news media seemed too preoccupied with Paris Hilton’s detention to notice, but a U.S. appeals court last week struck a major blow for liberty. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Bush administration may not declare a U.S. resident, whether a citizen or not, an “enemy combatant,” ...

Dare We Call It Tyranny?

by Sheldon Richman June 15, 2007

The American peoples response to President Bushs war on terror should be terror. The administration, sometimes with Congresss complicity: is preparing for a 50-year stay in Iraq, complete with 14 military bases and an embassy larger than the Vatican. (Can there be a better recruiting program for al Qaeda?) has abolished habeas corpus, the principle that for centuries has protected people ...

Must History Always Repeat Itself?

by Gary D. Barnett June 6, 2007

Some comparisons are just too tough to stomach, but the time has come to stomach one of them just the same. The United States has become the opposite of what was intended by our Founding Fathers. It is now not free, but rather sunk in dictatorial morass. What has become of us Americans? Why are we so weak as ...

The “Terrorist” Batting Average

by James Bovard June 1, 2007

For almost six years, the Bush administration has acted as if every terrorism accusation it makes should be received as the word of God on Mt. Sinai. Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury declared at a Senate hearing last July, “Under the law of war, the president is always right.” Thus, the issue is settled after the president’s men formally ...

The Sham of the Padilla Trial

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 30, 2007

Jury selection in the Jose Padilla case is now under way in federal district court in Miami, but the trial is nothing more than a sham. Why? Because no matter how the jury rules, Padilla is almost certain to remain incarcerated for a long time. If Padilla is convicted by the jury, the judge ...

The Pentagon’s Crooked “Judicial” Process

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 2, 2007

While Pentagon officials are celebrating the terrorism conviction of David Hicks in Guantanamo’s military-tribunal system, the process by which Hicks was convicted and sentenced only confirms that the Pentagon’s “judicial” system is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. After all, most everyone knew that Hicks, who has been held at Guantanamo for more ...

The Pentagon’s Power to Jail Americans Indefinitely

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 26, 2007

The presiding judge in the Jose Padilla case has held that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a speedy trial does not protect American citizens from being indefinitely incarcerated by the Pentagon. Padilla had filed a motion to dismiss the case on the ground that the federal government had denied him his right to a speedy trial. Padilla ...

Shssh! Don’t Tell Americans How We Treat “Enemy Combatants”

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 21, 2007

The case of accused terrorist Jose Padilla is moving toward a jury trial on April 16 in U.S. District Court in Miami. It is still unclear whether the presiding judge in the case, Marcia Cooke, will order an evidentiary hearing on Padilla’s motion to dismiss the charges based on the government’s outrageous pre-trial conduct while ...

The Islamo-Fascist Rationale for Abandoning Liberty

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 16, 2007

Also see: “The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians” “The Pentagon's Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans” “It Can't Happen Here” In my three articles “The Critical Dilemma Facing Pro-War Libertarians,” “The Pentagon’s Power to Arrest, Torture, and Execute Americans,” and “‘It Can’t Happen Here,’” I showed how ...

Mr. President, the CIA Is Already Talking to Syria

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 2, 2007

President Bush has decided that the U.S. government is now going to talk to Syria. The reason the president has steadfastly refused to talk to Syria before now is that Syria, he has repeatedly emphasized, is a state sponsor of terrorism. There is one part of all this, however, that is quite befuddling: The U.S. government ...