US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) Wednesday introduced legislation that would give Congress the power to bring lawsuits in federal court to challenge presidential bill signing statements the constitutionality of which is in question. President Bush has used the signing statements to bypass particular provisions that he considers unconstitutional, even though he has [...]

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Both houses of the US Congress passed bills Wednesday that impose investigation guidelines on the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) , the panel that approved a Dubai-owned company to manage US ports earlier this year. The Bush administration was criticized for signing off on the transaction without giving adequate [...]

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Anderson v. King County, Washington Supreme Court, July 26, 2006 . Excerpt: The two cases before us require us to decide whether the legislature has the power to limit marriage in Washington State to opposite-sex couples. The state constitution and controlling case law compel us to answer "yes," and we therefore reverse the trial courts. [...]

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Mexican leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador filed a criminal complaint against the Federal Electoral Institute Tuesday, alleging that it should have blocked campaign ads funded by private companies that he alleges broke election regulations. Obrador has claimed that the commercials contained subliminal messages . Obrador lost the July 2 presidential election by 0.6 [...]

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A federal judge in Manhattan ruled Wednesday that statements made by two partners at accountancy firm KPMG cannot be used in their upcoming trial because federal prosecutors coerced the two defendants into cooperating with the ongoing criminal tax shelters case by using excessive financial pressure over the two men. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan also [...]

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China's Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) , the country's highest criminal prosecution body, has issued new regulations outlining 42 offenses constituting abuses of authority in a bid to prevent torture of criminal suspects and other malfeasance. The regulations are meant to provide criteria for prosecuting authorities to follow when launching investigations. The offenses include divulging state [...]

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