The UN Joint Disciplinary Committee has concluded that the only employee fired during the UN oil-for-food scandal did not violate staff rules and should be reinstated, according to the ruling obtained by the Associated Press Thursday. The three-judge UN appeals panel said that Joseph Stephanides was made into a "sacrificial lamb" because he was fired [...]

Senior White House advisor Karl Rove spoke at the annual meeting of the Federalist Society Thursday to commend President Bush's conservative nominees to the US Supreme Court and denounce judicial activism. This was Rove's first public appearance since testifying before a grand jury last month in the ongoing CIA leak investigation . Rove praised Bush's [...]

Text of Senate Amendment 2516 to S. 1042 (the 2006 defense appropriations bill), US Senate, November 10, 2005 . Full text from the Congressional Record: REVIEW OF STATUS OF DETAINEES. (a) Submittal of Procedures for Status Review of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.–Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this [...]

The US Senate voted 49-42 late Thursday to block Guantanamo Bay detainees from challenging their imprisonment in US federal courts. The legislation, proposed by GOP Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) , conflicts with the 2004 US Supreme Court ruling in Rasul v. Bush , which held that according to Court's interpretation of congressional intent, "aliens held [...]

US Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor , Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer Thursday briefly debated the possibility of media cameras in the chambers of the US Supreme Court during an ABA symposium . Senators predicted Wednesday that recently introduced legislation authorizing the televising of all Supreme Court hearings will easily pass both houses of [...]

The Ethiopian government on Thursday released 2,417 prisoners held without charge in connection with a violent confrontation with police that left 42 people dead last week. The riot occured during a protest against alleged ballot fraud said to have been orchestrated by the Coalition for Unity and Democracy , Ethiopia's largest opposition party. Ethiopian Prime [...]

The US Department of Justice has submitted a body of proposed laws to Congress that would strengthen federal intellectual property enforcement, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced Thursday during remarks at an anti-piracy meeting in Washington, DC. Gonzales said that the Intellectual Property Protection Act 2005, the "comprehensive legislative package" designed by the DOJ, responds [...]

A Pentagon spokesperson has said that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is authorized to override the new Department of Defense Directive released Tuesday requiring all interrogations of detainees to be conducted in a humane manner. The authority to override the directive comes from the text of the new rule, statingIntelligence interrogations will be conducted [...]

US Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana Jim Letten has announced that his office is conducting a criminal investigation into alleged corruption of individuals involved in the design, construction and maintenance of the flood barriers of the New Orleans levee system, which failed during Hurricane Katrina and led to extensive flooding of the city [...]

Representatives of the NAACP and the ACLU Voting Rights Project testified before the US House Judiciary Committee Wednesday as to how Congress should modify the Voting Rights Act when it comes up for renewal in 2007. The witnesses advocated that Congress modify the "retrogression" standard established in Section 5 of the Act because its current [...]