In the months following Sept. 11, the National Security Agency provided a "flood" of surveillance information to the FBI, most of which proved to be worthless and a waste of FBI resources, and which prompted FBI doubts about the legality of the NSA's increasing role in domestic intelligence, the New York Times reported Tuesday. The [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Stephen Vladeck of the University of Miami School of Law says that for all the issues presented at various junctures by the Jose Padilla case, none is more important – nor, at this point, more politically sensitive – than that concerning the extent of Presidential power under the 2001 Authorization to Use [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Peter Shane of Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, says that the confirmation hearings for US Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito were a distressingly hollow ritual that reflected poorly on the nominee, the Senators questioning him, and the current state of the confirmation process… To start candidly, I was opposed [...]

Restoring the Rule of Law, former Vice-President Al Gore, January 16, 2006 . Excerpt: A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they [...]

Senate leaders announced late Monday that a US Senate Judiciary Committee vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel Alito which could have taken place as early as Tuesday will be postponed by a week until January 24, with consideration by the full Senate to follow immediately afterwards. Ranking Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy said [...]

In a scathing and fiery speech in Washington Monday on eavesdropping and excesses of executive power, former Vice-President and 2000 Democratic Party nominee Al Gore declared that the US Constitution was in "grave danger" and accused President Bush of repeatedly breaking the law by authorizing warrantless wiretaps on domestic communications. Gore said that the "disrespect [...]

A Bangladesh court Monday sentenced a member of the outlawed Islamist militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen to 15 years in prison for involvement in a wave of bomb attacks across the country on August 17 last year that killed 2 and wounded 100. The group wants to turn Bangladesh , now the third most populated Muslim country [...]

Human rights groups Monday voiced objections to Sudan President Omar al-Bashir becoming the rotating chair of the African Union for 2006-2007 when African nations hold a summit in Khartoum next week. In a letter to African leaders, a coalition of 50 groups expressed concern about Bashir shaping the peace progress in the violence-wracked Darfur region [...]

The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) announced Monday that it would disregard 227 ballot boxes from the December 15 parliamentary elections in response to 58 serious complaints of election fraud . Since Iraqis voted at about 6,200 voting centers across the country with an average of 5 ballot boxes each, the 227 boxes to [...]

A replacement judge has been named to preside over the Iraqi High Criminal Court ] trying ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein following the weekend resignation of chief judge Rizgar Amin , according to the court's chief prosecutor speaking Monday. Amin deputy Sayeed al-Hamashi will take over the next session of the Hussein trial scheduled for [...]