The father of John Walker Lindh , the American caught fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, called on President Bush Thursday to grant his son clemency and commute his 20 year sentence in a speech to San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. Lindh, who was 20-years-old when captured in Afghanistan, pleaded guilty in 2002 to [...]

US Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday defended the Bush administration's authorization of domestic surveillance in the weeks following Sept. 11, saying the program is a crucial tool in monitoring terrorist organizations. In a speech at the Manhattan Institute, Cheney objected to the characterization of the program as "domestic", stressing that the National Security Agency [...]

The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance won 128 of 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament, the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq (IECI) said Friday when it released final results from the December 15 parliamentary elections . Results had been delayed pending the outcome of an investigation into alleged voting fraud , which culminated with the release [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a motion in federal court seeking to compel Internet search giant Google to comply with a subpoena issued last summer. The subpoena requests that Google provide a "multi-stage random sample of one million URLs" and the text of search strings entered into Google databases over a one [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Peter Henning of Wayne State University Law School says that while lawmakers in Washington are floating new ethics regulations in the wake of the Abramoff lobbying scandal, they might do better to apply existing laws and work on developing a political culture that puts the burden on elected representatives and their staffs [...]

Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President, US Department of Justice, January 19, 2006 the Fourth Amendment's fundamental requirement of reasonableness"]. Read the full text of the white paper . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Final Assessment Report, International Mission for Iraqi Elections, January 19, 2006 . Read the full text of the report. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The US Justice Department Thursday released a 42-page white paper laying out a legal basis for the domestic surveillance program run by the National Security Agency . The paper argues that the NSA activities are supported by the president's position as Commander in Chief and congressional authorization for the war on al Qaeda under the [...]

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday there is no immediate plan to release six of eight women detained by US forces in Iraq. His comment and similar ones from US military spokesmen follow statements by Iraq's Justice Ministry earlier in the day that the women were being freed . The ministry said the move [...]

Nigeria’s government has announced plans to ban same-sex marriage and any protests urging same-sex unions. Government officials have said the legislation is a preemptive step in light of other nations legalizing same-sex unions around the world. President Olusegun Obasanjo has been a vocal opponent of same-sex marriages in Africa . BBC News has more.