Russ McBee

A couple of days ago, the Pope apologized again, this time in Sydney, for the Catholic Church's global sex abuse scandal: Speaking in Sydney, where he is participating in World Youth Day celebrations, the pontiff called the abuses 'a grave betrayal of trust' that deserved condemnation and called for the victims to receive 'care and ...

Major General Antonio Taguba, who conducted an extensive inquiry into the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, has spoken out again on the Bush regime's lawlessness. In his preface to a new report from Physicians for Human Rights, he says this: In order for [detainees] to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was ...

This morning, the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Boumediene v. Bush, holding that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts. As SCOTUSblog said: The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so ...

The sham ''trials'' of detainees at Guantanamo have always been legally and Constitutionally invalid, but they were continuing anyway. Now, the process of these show trials has met some blowback from within the Pentagon (in contrast to civilian trials, all of the defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges in these cases are uniformed officers in ...

In August 2002, John Yoo wrote an infamous memo on behalf of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel which attempted to justify the use of torture by the CIA. The memo has since been released (PDF here), widely circulated, and then disavowed by the Bush White House. Another memo accompanied that one which remains secret to this day; this ...

When China was awarded the 2008 Olympics seven years ago, the executive director of the International Olympic Committee made the announcement with breathtaking naiveté: Beijing was the front-runner throughout the race, even with criticism about its human rights record. IOC members clearly believed the Olympics will open China to the world, ...

President Bush signed the Colombia Free Trade Agreement yesterday and sent it to Congress for consideration, over the objections of practically anyone with a conscience: President Bush’s decision to send the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to Congress over the strong objections of the leadership of both the House and the Senate ''shows ...

Of all the humanitarian aid organizations in the world, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) stands head and shoulders above the rest. They go where the Red Cross and others dare not. In the face of murderous assaults on aid workers, in which three of their own staff members were killed, the organization refuses to give up on Somalia ...

George ''Baby Doc'' Bush vetoed a bill today that would have banned the CIA from torturing people using waterboarding. The bill would have required the CIA and other government agencies to abide by the interrogation guidelines set forth in the US Army Field Manual. One retired general had this to say: Retired Army Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, a ...

Senators Jay Rockefeller and Patrick Leahy and Congressmen Silvestre Reyes and John Conyers have an op-ed piece in tomorrow's Christian Science Monitor that calls out the White House on its fear-mongering tactics regarding warrantless surveillance: Our country did not ''go dark'' on Feb. 16 when the Protect America Act (PAA) expired. ...