The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed an appeal for the families of two of the three men who died in mysterious circumstances in June 2006. The U.S. government called it “asymmetrical warfare” by the detainees, who are said to have killed themselves in some belief that would hurt the U.S. government. As bizarre as that theory is, Defense Department investigations found the men committed suicide in a multiple, timed series of three planned suicides.

Jon Tester is, to the best of my knowledge, the first member of Congress to complain about FBI’s new investigative guidelines allowing agents to–among other thing–search potential informants’ trash.

There are two tiers of justice in America. The rich get access to the courts and the ability to avoid accountability if they commit wrongdoing. The poor don’t.

It is hard for an administration to get a confirmation if it does not make nominations. Take federal judges for instance, for most of the past two years there have been around a hundred vacancies on the Circuit and District courts; Mr. Obama has rarely had nominees for more than half of them. This is simply federal administrative incompetence, and it takes a heavy toll in the hallways and dockets of justice.

The nomination of Goodwin Liu to the 9th Circuit gets a vote in the Senate today, and the prospects are pretty bleak. President Obama nominated Alaska Supreme Court justice Morgen Christen to the 9th Circuit (which has four vacancies) yesterday, drawing praise from Lisa Murkowski. Perhaps this was part of a deal to get Murkowski’s vote for Liu. Other than that, I haven’t seen much of a strategy to get this accomplished, other than trying to force Republicans to be as good as their past statements about filibustering judicial nominations.

This is a fairly astounding happening as Liu was first nominated to the 9th in February of 2010, but the nomination died at the end of the 2010 session from lack of even an attempt to call for a floor vote. President Obama promptly renominated Liu, and he was again promptly reported out of the Judiciary Committee on a straight party line vote, but it appeared as if the nomination would be again be left to die a quiet death. Apparently not.

Oh this is rich. After NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly got the residents and businesses surrounding the federal courthouse all ginned up with fear of holding the terrorism trial of Kalid Sheik Mohammed in NYC federal court, he has now brought a case to be tried in a NYS courthouse right next door.

A motley crew of Senate Republicans, joined by Sen. Lieberman, have introduced a bill to make Guantanamo a permanent “terrorist” prison. Once upon a time, this could have been dismissed as GOP posturing. But recent events suggest this is more likely a harbinger of the future fate of the US Naval prison, as President Obama has already pronounced that he will support indefinite detention of prisoners based on unchallenged U.S. executive fiat.

Apart from taxes & tyranny, warm beer and the Beatles, Robin Hood and Royal Weddings, what has England ever given us? For starters, the rule of law.

We talk about it here a lot, about how it no longer seems to apply to government and corporate elites. Like a hole in the sidewalk on a snowy day, that creates a slush-filled pool. We can step in it day after Groundhog Day. Or we can learn more about what “the rule of law” means and repair the crack.

Well, yes, of course this was the decision of the Roberts Court; it was as predictable as the sun rising in the east. The conservative block in the Roberts Court – Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Kennedy rarely miss an opportunity to buck up big business and screw individuals and consumers when it comes to any issue involving class action law and/or standing. It is simply what they do, and they have no problem doing by politicized 5-4 majority opinion.