European governments must be held accountable for their role in the extraordinary rendition practices in the so-called war on terror, rights groups say. According to the Open Society Justice Initiative, the European Court of Human Rights said it would consider the case of German citizen Khaled el-Masri who was subjected to extraordinary rendition allegedly at [...]

Let’s spend just a moment thinking about what this means.  We’ve known since December, 2005, that Bush officials, including at the NSA, committed felonies by eavesdropping on Americans without the warrants required by law — crimes punishable by a five-year prison term and$10,000 fine for each offense.  All three federal judges to rule on the question have found those [...]

Lost in the haze of the hoopla surrounding the insurance reform bill was some big news on the financial reform front. On March 19, Bloomberg won its lawsuit against the Federal Reserve for information that could expose which “too big to fail” banks in the United States are walking zombies and which banks were merely [...]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaDh1kdltLc[/youtube] JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case. A government list of previously [...]

Lawsuits from 14 states challenging the constitutionality of the new national healthcare law face an uphill battle, largely due to a far-reaching Supreme Court ruling in 2005 that upheld federal restrictions on home-grown marijuana in California. At issue in that case — just like in the upcoming challenges to the healthcare overhaul — was the [...]

Hassan Nemazee, 60, who once ran a private equity firm, admitted in Manhattan federal court to defrauding Bank of America Corp of more than $142 million, Citigroup Inc of $74.9 million and HSBC Holdings Plc of $74.9 million to pay his debt to Citigroup. [...] Nemazee was listed as one of the top “bundlers” of [...]

The Obama administration does not expect to capture Osama Bin Laden alive. Attorney General Eric Holder told a House appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday that the possibility of catching the Al Qaeda leader alive is “infinitesimal.” “Based on the intelligence I’ve reviewed, the possibility simply does not exist,” Mr. Holder said in response to heated questioning [...]

Liz Cheney advocates torture and indefinite detention with no charges, and just launched a repulsive McCarthyite smear campaign equating all detainee lawyers with Al Qaeda.  The ACLU has steadfastly opposed Bush’s torture policies as early as anyone, advocates due process for all, and ran a newspaper advertisement pointing out the indisputable fact that military commissions and [...]

There are times when governments fight to keep documents secret to protect sensitive intelligence or other vital national security interests. And there are times when they are just trying to cover up incompetence, misbehavior or lawbreaking. Last week, when a British court released secret intelligence material relating to the torture allegations of a former Guantánamo [...]

ProPublica has interviewed or obtained complaints from 85 current and former air marshals in nearly every one of the agency’s 21 field offices over the past year and half. They all told similar stories of being treated unfairly in promotions, assignments or discipline by supervisors who target those who speak up or don’t fit a [...]