Supreme Court to Take Up PATRIOT Act with Review of Case on Humanitarian Assistance to Groups on Terror List

DemocracyNow!
October 1, 2009

In its first-ever review of the PATRIOT Act, the Supreme Court has announced it will decide the constitutionality of a controversial anti-terrorism law that makes it a crime to give any form of aid, including humanitarian assistance, to groups on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. The Supreme Court case centers on a lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project. We speak to David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and attorney in the case...

Click on Title above to continue

Ask Your Representative to Support H. Res. 554

Read The Bill
September 23, 2009

At the end of the day it comes down to this: an informed citizenry is critical to a functioning democracy. The point isn't only whether legislators read every word, but whether all citizens - people like us - have an opportunity to review and comment on pending legislation before it has an impact on our lives.

We are going to make sure we have that chance.

There's no ifs, ands, or buts. Legislation should be online for everyone to read.

Click on Title above to act...

“Good Billions After Bad”–One Year After Wall Street Bailout, Pulitzer Winners Barlett and Steele Investigate Where All the Money Went

DemocracyNow!
September 10, 2009

It’s been exactly one year since the onset of the financial crisis and the passage of the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. But what were the factors in deciding who received bailout funds? And what happened to all the money? The answer to those two simple questions is: We don’t know. In a new article in Vanity Fair, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team Donald Barlett and James Steele try to find an answer. The problem is, they write, “once the money left the building, the government lost all track of it.”...

Click on Title above to continue

High Court Weighs Rules On Campaign Finance

by Nina Totenberg
National Public Radio
September 9, 2009

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have returned early from their summer recess to hear arguments in a case that could rip apart the legal underpinnings of the nation's campaign finance laws. For more than a century, for all practical purposes, those laws have barred corporations from spending money on candidate elections.

Wednesday's argument is a double first: The first argument to be heard by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and the first time new U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan will argue a case before the Supreme Court.

The justices view the case as so important that they are hearing it three weeks before the official opening of the new term, and they have taken the unusual step of allowing same-day broadcast of the audio...

Click on Title above to continue

Fraud Complaints Cloud Afghan Election

by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
National Public Radio
September 1, 2009

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is ahead in the slow tally of ballots cast in the Aug. 20 elections. But the question looming for many Afghan voters isn't who will win, but whether the balloting was credible.

That decision rests with an American, a Canadian, a Dutchman and two Afghans who serve on the country's Electoral Complaints Commission. Hundreds of formal complaints of election fraud have been filed to the commission. If proven, the allegations could change the outcome of the race...

Click on Title above to continue

Nadler: Obama Violating Law By Not Investigating Bush

by Sam Stein
August 21, 2009
Huffington Post

...Nadler said that a special prosecutor should handle the task, because some of the likely subjects of such an investigation worked in the Justice Department. "There is an inherent conflict interest," said Nadler," which is why you must appoint a special prosecutor. But, again, you have no choice because that's the law."

Respected by his colleagues as one of the sharpest legal minds in Congress, Nadler has taken a leading role in pushing the Obama administration to investigate its predecessor. Beyond the legal requirements, he argues that there is a moral and political imperative - lest the precedent be set that potential illegalities go un-probed...

Click on Title above for full article

Supreme Court Orders Evidentiary Hearing for Death Row Prisoner Troy Anthony Davis; Rare Decision Could Result in New Trial

DemocracyNow!
August 19, 2009

The Supreme Court has taken the rare step of ordering a new hearing for Georgia death row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis. The nation’s highest court ordered a federal district court in Georgia to “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes his innocence.” Davis was convicted for the 1989 killing of a white police officer. Since then, seven of the nine non-police witnesses have recanted their testimony, and there is no physical evidence tying him to the crime scene. In a Democracy Now! special, we hear from Davis, speaking from death row; Davis’s fifteen-year-old nephew Antone, and his sister Martina Correia, who have led the campaign to exonerate him; Laura Moye of Amnesty International USA; and Ezekiel Edwards, a staff attorney at the Innocence Project...

Click on Title above to continue