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By Art Spiegelman
By Nomi Prins $10.36
$17
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 Dank Depot (CC BY 2.0)
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After mischaracterizing a law governing medical marijuana distribution, the president who refused to prosecute those who led the U.S. into an indefinite war on terror told a Rolling Stone interviewer last month that he couldn’t ask the Justice Department to “turn the other way” when it comes to potential violations of medical marijuana use.
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 AP/Mel Evans
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It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that U.S. Supreme Court justices voted along party lines when approving, on a 5-4 vote, the expansion of strip-searching guidelines to include anyone who’s been arrested for any offense and is en route to jail.
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 Wikimedia Commons / Supreme Court of the United States
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Would it be possible to let some of President Obama’s infamous 2010 health care reform legislation—or “Obamacare,” if you speak Republican—stand while scrapping other parts and still have a functional law at the end of the process? That was one big question Supreme Court justices grappled with on Wednesday.
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 Adam Fagan / Rights reserved
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On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court launched a three-day deliberation session on the timely (well, for Campaign 2012, anyway) and controversial topic of the health care overhaul that President Obama oversaw and signed into law in 2010.
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 Martin Family Photo
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Neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman said he shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in self-defense, although a 911 operator told Zimmerman not to follow the teenager through a suburban Orlando, Fla., gated community.
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 AP / Brennan Linsley
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The indefinite detention center that has undermined American justice since the first prisoners arrived from Afghanistan 10 years ago Wednesday is still open for business in Cuba. (more)
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 AP / Reed Saxon
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By Bill Blum — Meet the woman who spent 22 years working alone and without pay to set free a convicted serial killer who, in all likelihood, is innocent.
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Princeton University professor Dr. Cornel West spoke to a crowd of almost 3,000 people at the Riverside Church in New York City on Friday during an evening of remembrance for another sort of 9/11. (more)
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 Library of Congress / Dick DeMarsico
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — We tend to honor the Martin Luther King Jr. we want to honor, not the Martin Luther King Jr. who actually existed.
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 Facebook.com/fbi
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A new investigation by Mother Jones reveals that the FBI has cultivated a huge network of informants and spies, many of whom are directed to seek out disgruntled Muslims. “And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity” to commit terrorist attacks, Trevor Aaronson writes. (more)
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 World Trade Organization (CC-BY-ND)
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Multiple sources are reporting that at a hearing Tuesday prosecutors are likely to drop some or all of the charges against former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is accused of attempting to rape a maid at a New York hotel. (more)
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 Paul Keller (CC-BY)
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By Karen J. Greenberg, TomDispatch —
As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the unexpected extent of the damage Americans have done to themselves and their institutions is coming into better focus.
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 AP / David J. Phillip
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By Bill Boyarsky — Gov. Rick Perry is a happy executioner, having presided over 230 executions in Texas. That’s more, reported The Texas Tribune, “than any other modern governor of any state.”
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 Flickr / Defence Images
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Pakistani lawyer and human rights champion Mirza Shahzad Akbar, who has aided the U.S. government in legal counterterrorism efforts, was banned from traveling to the States to speak at Columbia Law School after suing the CIA about drone strikes that have killed civilians in his country. (more)
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 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Argentina’s bloody past and New York’s historic gay marriage moment. Also, actor and activist Mike Farrell talks about death penalty injustice. Plus, Robert and Peter Scheer celebrate (sort of) Justice Scalia.
Posted on Jun 29, 2011
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This week on Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK: Argentina’s bloody past and New York’s historic gay marriage moment. Also, actor and activist Mike Farrell talks about death penalty injustice. Plus, Robert and Peter Scheer celebrate (sort of) Justice Scalia. Update: Full transcript.
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 Jeff Schuler (CC-BY)
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The FBI is making it easier for agents to snoop on their fellow Americans without leaving a paper trail, raising disturbing questions outlined by The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer. A former agent quoted by Serwer says it may return the agency to the COINTELPRO era.
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 Mr. Fish
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By Chris Hedges — The draconian legal mechanisms that condemn Muslim Americans who speak out publicly about the outrages we commit in the Middle East have left many wasting away in supermax prisons.
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On this week’s episode of Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK, we investigate why so many innocent people end up in prison; find out how much various college majors really pay; look into the future of depression-chic food; and learn why Apple’s high profits threaten teachers. Plus, another special report from the cutting edge by Mr. Fish. Update: Full transcript.
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 Photo illustration from an image by Colin Grey
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On this week’s episode of Truthdig Radio in collaboration with KPFK, we investigate why so many innocent people end up in prison; find out how much various college majors really pay; look into the future of depression-chic food; and learn why Apple’s high profits threaten teachers. Plus, another special report from the cutting edge by Mr. Fish.
Posted on Jun 1, 2011
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 supremecourtus.gov
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What are we to make of Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling, which will make life more difficult for Arizona employers who deliberately hire undocumented workers? The Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen offered his perspective later that day.
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 Rob Shenk (CC-BY-SA)
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California’s overcrowded prisons have “fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements,” causing “needless suffering and death,” according to a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. The state, which imposes draconian sentences on repeat offenders, must now find a way to reduce its prison population by at least 38,000 inmates.
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Angry Wisconsin liberals are using the state’s Supreme Court election as a referendum on Gov. Scott Walker and taking aim at expletive-flinging Justice David Prosser. Will this justice be served?
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By Amy Goodman — This week, the New York state Supreme Court will hear the case against John Leso, a psychologist who is accused of participating in torture at the Gitmo prison camp that President Obama pledged, and failed, to close.
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 World Economic Forum / Remy Steinegger
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Officials at the SEC have begun to doubt that the agency can prove that executives of the now-defunct Lehman Brothers investment bank broke the law after the company allegedly moved billions of dollars off its balance sheet.
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 Paul Keller (CC-BY)
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Military trials will resume at America’s notorious island gulag. The president failed during the last two years to shut down the detention facility, which he says helps America’s enemies recruit, and move trials to the civilian justice system. (more)
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 Composite: Flickr: oneras / free tibet
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By Stanley Kutler — The Constitution is rooted and understood in terms of its history; without that, it is merely an isolated document, portraying a moment in 1787. We can do without the arriviste Michele Bachmann to tell us exactly what its words mean.
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 Flickr / World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CC-BY-SA)
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If Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat, signs off on the legislation, Illinois will become the 16th state to eliminate the death penalty. The state has not executed anyone since 1999, after it was discovered that innocent convicts had been put to death.
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By Eugene Robinson — Race still matters in America and justice is not completely blind. Anyone who believes otherwise should examine the case of Cornelius Dupree Jr., who was ruled innocent Tuesday after spending 30 years in prison.
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 Flickr / Stefano Mortellaro (CC-BY-ND)
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Gulet Mohamed is an 18-year old American citizen who was effectively exiled while traveling abroad for the apparent crime of exploring his Muslim heritage. While in Kuwait, Mohamed was added to the no-fly list, arrested, beaten and threatened with torture. Glenn Greenwald has posted a 50-minute conversation with Mohamed.
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 AP / Max Whittaker
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The first day of deliberation in the Supreme Court about that perennial legal favorite, violence in video games, brought debate Tuesday about the potential damage done by minors’ exposure to sex versus violence ... and a Founding Fathers joke from Justice Samuel Alito.
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 Wikimedia Commons
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Now that retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens no longer has to see his former colleague Justice Antonin Scalia in the lunchroom every day, he’s free to tell tales out of the top court, which he did earlier this month in a speech criticizing Scalia’s handling of a case from 1991.
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 Flickr / dbking
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What do you get when you mix issues regarding a fallen soldier, free speech, homophobia and gays in the military and throw in hatemonger pastor Fred Phelps and Larry Flynt’s famous court battle with Jerry Fallwell?
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 Flickr / World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CC-BY-SA)
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Teresa Lewis is scheduled to be executed this month, the first woman to be officially killed by the state of Virginia in nearly a century. In the five years since a woman was last executed in the United States, the government put 220 men to death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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 Flickr / notsogoodphotography (CC-BY)
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Twenty-eight-year-old German singer Nadja Benaissa faces prison time for allegedly having unprotected sex with multiple partners without informing them that she has the virus that causes AIDS.
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 White House / Pete Souza
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The Senate confirmed Elena Kagan on Thursday by a vote of 63-37. She will be the nation’s 112th Supreme Court justice and Barack Obama’s second appointment. Once she takes her oaths, it will be the first time, despite her impressive résumé, that Kagan has ever been a judge.
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 Flickr / Berkman10_220 (CC-BY-SA)
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Elena Kagan is almost through the wringer, awaiting a Senate vote later this week on her Supreme Court nomination. Hers has been a fairly uneventful vetting process, and judging by the mood on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, she’ll soon be sporting a black robe.
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 youtube.com
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The Los Angeles jury hearing the case of the BART cop who killed an unarmed Oakland man on New Year’s Day 2009 went with the least serious of three possible charges, convicting the former officer of involuntary manslaughter. He faces two to four years in prison.
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 supremecourtus.gov
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The U.S. Supreme Court changed the future fortunes of minors accused of less severe crimes than murder on Monday, ruling in a 6-3 decision that doling out life sentences with no chance of parole in those cases would amount to cruel and unusual punishment.
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 AP / Alex Brandon
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On Thursday, Supreme Court hopeful Elena Kagan observed the nominee tradition of making the rounds on Capitol Hill by dropping in on key senators from both sides of the aisle, and it seems she made some key gains—even Scott Brown might vote to confirm her!
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Since conservative pundits are slacking in their duty of tearing apart Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan before she can clinch her lifetime position, Stephen Colbert is on hand to step in and grasp at straws, literally, in an effort to besmirch her sparkling reputation.
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 Flickr / blhphotography
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Pointing to the First Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday nixed a federal law from 1999 that made the creation, possession or sale of depictions of animal cruelty illegal, despite the Obama administration’s request that the top court consider the animal rights angle in its decision.
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 Wikimedia Commons
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Liberal Justice John Paul Stevens has announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court. The 89-year-old will step down when the court’s term ends in June or July, giving President Barack Obama the opportunity to make his second appointment to the high court.
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 Flickr / HeatedGroundPhotography
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Lagging a few years behind the liberal media, public opinion and common sense, the justice system has come to the conclusion that President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program broke the rules. (continued)
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By Amy Goodman — An unusual trial begins in Israel this week, and people around the world will be watching closely. It involves the tragic death of a 23-year-old American student named Rachel Corrie. On March 16, 2003, she was crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer.
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 Flickr / taberandrew
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The U.S. Supreme Court may be ready to change the scope of the Second Amendment, as five of the top court’s justices (guess which ones?) have signaled their opinions about American citizens’ rights to bear arms and appear ready to take steps that could override some local and state gun rules, with Chicago as a potential starting point.
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