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Last year, two Russian oligarchs, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, both nearing the end of lengthy jail terms on corruption charges, were tried and convicted a second time. Observers of…

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In a feature at Foreign Policy, I explore in greater depth the case of Raymond A. Davis, a CIA contractor who shot and killed two Pakistanis on a motorcycle back…

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Bradley Manning, an American soldier under suspicion of having leaked classified and sensitive information to WikiLeaks, has been in prison since May, 2010. His conditions of confinement are increasingly strange…

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The Arab Revolution of 2011, still in progress, started in Tunisia, continued to Egypt, and is now being played out in Libya, the nation that separates them. Tunisia’s Zine El…

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The New York Times reports on the case of Julian P. Heicklen, a 78-year-old retired chemistry professor from New Jersey, who now faces federal criminal charges. What has the mild-mannered…

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As noted previously, candidate Barack Obama promised to protect whistleblowers who come forward with information disclosing government waste, abuse, and inefficiency. Unfortunately, President Obama has done exactly the opposite. Obama’s…

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In the years after 9/11, national security agencies in the United States found themselves with a lot of money to lavish on contractors. They spent tens of billions, and there…

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Career Air Force interrogator Matthew Alexander, who won the Bronze Star for leading a team in a series of intelligence breakthroughs in Iraq, has written a dramatic account of the…

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Raymond A. Davis is a U.S. government employee or contractor now in police custody in Pakistan in connection with the shooting of two men in Lahore on January 27. The…

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In the New York Times, Helene Cooper, Mark Landler, and David E. Sanger offer a curious glimpse into the Obama Administration’s internal dialogue over Egypt. They lead with Frank Wisner’s…

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Es fügt sich, do ich was von zehen jaren alt ich wolt besehen, wie die werlt wer gestalt. mit ellend, armüt mangen winkel, haiss und kalt hab ich gebawt bei…

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Sollte aber Ihr ehrliches, durch mehrfache Proben bewährtes Streben Ihnen mit Entschiedenheit besondere, von den bisherigen abweichende Wege weisen, dann—folgen Sie Ihrer eigenen Überzeugung mehr als jeder anderen. Denn diese…

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The Swiss Federal Council acted quickly on news that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has resigned. Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports (my translation): The Swiss Federal Council has immediately frozen all money…

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What happens to a CIA agent who authorizes the torture of an innocent citizen of a NATO ally, leaving a long trail of dumb mistakes behind? The answer appears to…

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Cherif Bassiouni, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago, was one of the key authors of the Convention Against Torture and is one of the world’s preeminent experts in…

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Former president George W. Bush was slated to speak at a gala charity event in Geneva on February 12, supporting United Israel Appeal. This weekend, a Bush spokesman announced that…

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Why is Hosni Mubarak struggling to add a few more months to a thirty-year run as president of Egypt? Part of the answer lies in the fact that deposed dictators…

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I spent the last week watching the developments in Egypt from London, where U.S., European, and Arab media are equally accessible. Watching them side-by-side, sometimes over many hours a day,…

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Beginning with the disclosures of Abu Ghraib and continuing over a period of several years, Reagan Administration Solicitor General and Harvard law professor Charles Fried discussed the Bush Administration’s policy…

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Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian citizen, traveled to Pakistan in 2001, seeking work and religious schooling for his children. On October 5, 2001, he was arrested by Pakistani police while…

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On one side, your lordships have the prisoner declaring that the people have no laws, no rights, no usages, no distinctions of rank, no sense of honor, no property; in…

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In the current Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi offers an incendiary portrait of the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner. It opens with a blast that is typical…

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The 112th Congress is the first since the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. How has that decision—which effectively opened the gates for corporate spending in election campaigns—shaped Congress? MSNBC’s…

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In a Dallas courtroom yesterday Cornelius Dupree, who had spent thirty years in prison on a conviction for rape, robbery, and abduction, was told that he had been exonerated. DNA…

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Bach’s cello suites are among the best known works of classical music, now risking popularization to the point of fatigue as they provide background music for cat food commercials. But…

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Polish prosecutors looking into the torture (including waterboarding) of prisoners held at the former CIA black site in northeastern Poland near Szymany air base turned to the U.S. Department of…

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The USA Today series on the systematic misconduct of federal prosecutors continues today, with an examination of the consequences that prosecutorial misconduct has for criminal defendants. It considers the case…

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