Daily Articles

The Rule of Law, Part 1

by Ridgway K. Foley Jr. February 1, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2 Americans laud the rule of law. They invoke its majesty during common discussion and learned discourse. They applaud their storied adherence to this grand old concept and disparage nations and cultures that seem less inclined to live by its guidance. Despite this adulation, I suspect that few of those employing the doctrine could ...

Lawyers Appeal Guantánamo Trial Convictions

by Andy Worthington February 1, 2010

Last Tuesday, a little-known court — the Court of Military Commissions Review — convened to hear appeals in the cases of the only two men sentenced in the military commission trial system established by Congress in 2006, after the first version, conceived by Vice President Dick Cheney and his close advisors in November 2001, was ruled illegal by ...

The Illogic of Gun Controllers

by Benedict D. LaRosa February 1, 2010

On August 9, 2009, seven people died and three others were badly injured in Dinuba, California, near Fresno, when a car being chased by police for a traffic infraction slammed into a pickup truck carrying five children and two adults. Four of the children in the pickup died at the scene along with the three occupants of the car ...

Bursting the Myths of the Great Depression

by George Leef February 1, 2010

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal by Robert P. Murphy (Regnery, 2009); 272 pages. Government of all kind depends on elaborate mythologies to keep the people complacent in the face of constant attacks on their liberty, their property, and even their lives. Kings used to proclaim that they were divine or at least ...

The Only Way to Get Money out of Politics

by Sheldon Richman January 28, 2010

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling striking down the ban on corporate and union spending at election time is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, removing a legal barrier to free speech is always a good thing in itself. Government shouldn’t dictate who can speak or from where people may get their information. This is more ...

September 11 and the Downward Arc of American Thought

by Joseph Margulies January 26, 2010

Days after the thwarted Christmas bombing, the Rasmussen Group took a poll. They asked whether the failed bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, should be tried in civilian or military court. Seventy-one percent said military. They also asked whether he should be waterboarded to extract information about his connection to terrorism. In a sign of the times, 58 percent of respondents said ...

Two Algerian Torture Victims Are Freed From Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington January 25, 2010

On Friday, perhaps as a sop to critics — myself included — who have been complaining about President Obama’s failure to close Guantánamo by his self-imposed deadline of January 22, 2010, the Justice Department announced in a press release that two Algerian prisoners had been released. Releasing prisoners to Algeria has always been a dubious business, akin to ...

Sex, Drugs, and Consenting Adults

by Scott McPherson January 20, 2010

The Georgia Supreme Court has struck down a 170-year-old law forbidding sexual acts between unmarried people. The ruling, which came on Monday, January 13, was the result of a case of a 16-year-old boy caught having sex with his girlfriend in her home. “Our opinion,” wrote Chief Justice Norman Fletcher, “simply affirms that ... the government may not reach into ...

Obama’s Countdown to Failure on Guantánamo

by Andy Worthington January 18, 2010

Barring some frankly unattainable miracle, this will be the week that President Obama’s international credibility, regarding his promises to undo the Bush administration’s “war on terror” detention policies, takes a nosedive. The president began well, freezing the much-criticized military commissions trial system on his first day in office, and, on his second day, issuing executive orders requiring Guantánamo to ...

National Security: The Big Fraud

by Sheldon Richman January 12, 2010

The handwringing about the would-be Christmas Day airplane bomber and the politicians’ tiresome declarations that it will never happen again miss the point: As long as the U.S. government pursues its imperial program of invasion, regime change, occupation, and sponsorship of corrupt governments in the Muslim world, Americans will be targets for avengers. This does not excuse the killing ...

Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights

by Andy Worthington January 11, 2010

On the eighth anniversary of the opening of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the implications of a ruling ( PDF.) last week in the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia have added another layer of uncertainty to the prisoners’ future, in a week that was notorious for a barrage of 

Guantánamo and Yemen: Obama Capitulates to Critics and Suspends Prisoner Transfers

by Andy Worthington January 7, 2010

For the last 12 days, since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab slipped through every security net going, and allegedly tried and failed to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Republican critics of Barack Obama have tried every trick in the book to undermine the president’s authority, with former Vice President Dick Cheney claiming that the incident demonstrated ...