A U.S. judge has ordered that five Algerians captured in Bosnia after the September 11th attacks be freed from Guantanamo. My colleague Chris Boucek does groundbreaking work on counterterrorism and detainee issues at Carnegie, and I drew on his expertise in my remarks at last night’s AFF roundtable.

Greg Craig clearly has the qualifications, but you’ve laugh a little at this, no?
President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Washington lawyer Gregory B. Craig, who served as President Bill Clinton’s lead attorney during the 1998 impeachment proceedings, to be his White House counsel, according to an individual involved with the transition. . . .
Craig was a [...]

Now this is just classic:
WASHINGTON – A juror who vanished during Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ corruption trial told the judge Monday she lied about her father dying and flew to California to see horse races.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered Marian Hinnant, identified as juror No. 4, to return to court to explain why she [...]

Megan makes a characteristically smart comment:
Bill Mayer and Clive just had a very interesting exchange on the topic of the American versus the British approach to financial regulation. American regulation is extremely rules focused–everything not compulsory is forbidden. Britain is nominally looser, with the caveat that you can’t get away by saying that “the rules [...]

Snap judgment on the court´s ruling: this is the graf that counts:
A second fact insufficiently appreciated by the dissents is the length of the disputed imprisonments, some of the prisoners represented here today having been locked up for six years. Hence the hollow ring when the dissenters suggest that the court is somehow precipitating the [...]

There is no way I’m going to be able to get through the 172 pages of the California marriage cases opinion anytime soon [pdf]. But in my punchdrunk way I can cherry pick a few items.
First I have to get out of the way the personal confession that gay marriage as a constitutional question leaves [...]

Ten days ago I expressed displeasure over the latest court rulings on capital punishment. Lethal injection struck me as a far crueler option than what is still known, in an accidental irony, as ‘execution-style’ shooting. I also worried that permitting the execution of child rapists only after finding that society is becoming ‘more cruel’ is [...]