Posts by Daphne Eviatar

Republicans and Democrats have been sniping about the USA Patriot Act ever since Congress passed the law in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks to try to forestall another such disaster. But now, it’s the Democrats who are sniping among themselves about it.

WASHINGTON — Just in case he wasn’t familiar with it, Sen. Al Franken decided to read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to David Kris, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, who was testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee today to urge reauthorization of expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

As University of Minnesota bioethicist and torture expert Dr. Steven Miles was researching the deaths of detainees in U.S. custody, he noticed something strange. Although the Department of Defense had in the past issued press releases when detainees died at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, at some point in 2006, he says, the “entire prisoner death reporting system was turned off in Afghanistan.” Although at that time deaths in Iraq were still being reported, he says, that system was “turned off” at the beginning of 2008.

I guess Rep. “Joe” Wilson (R-S.C.) — actually, Addison Graves Wilson, Sr. — found out about that secret Democratic plot to provide all illegal immigrants with free health care.
What else could explain his outburst — “You Lie!” — during President Obama’s speech on health care reform (video), responding to the president’s statement that “the reforms [...]

The high court’s decision in a case about an anti-Hillary Clinton documentary could carry broad implications.

As the heat gets turned up on the health care reform debate, anti-immigrant activists are using the issue to whip up fear and anger toward immigrants, portraying them as a costly and burdensome drain on any taxpayer-supported U.S. health care system.

Last week, it was revealed that the law that makes it a federal crime to threaten or commit violence against abortion providers, or to vandalize their clinics, wasn’t being enforced. Now our sister site, the Washington Independent, finds that the Bush administration’s Department of Justice did little over the past eight years in enforcing the civil component of that federal law.

A Guantanamo detainee’s transfer to the United States for trial is at odds with the president’s call for a new system of indefinite imprisonment.

Many of the same conservatives criticizing Sonia Sotomayor for her decision in a reverse discrimination case once supported a race-based initiative: No Child Left Behind.

Noting that most of the criticism from the right of Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor has completely ignored her long written record as a court of appeals judge, SCOTUSblog offers a detailed analysis of “an obviously serious candidate to serve on the Supreme Court.”
Here’s the authoritative blog’s take on Sotomayor’s opinions on key cases [...]