Not surprisingly, I strongly disagree with Julian's insistence that "the ICC really is now the obstacle to peace" in Uganda. To begin with, we need to give the ICC credit where credit is due: as Mark Leon Goldberg pointed out earlier today at the invaluable UN Dispatch, "[i]t was not until the ICC began its investigation and issued indictments...
Democrat Andre Carson won a special congressional election in Indiana yesterday to replace his grandmother, Julia Carson, who died a few months ago. Carson is the second Muslim elected to Congress, following in the footsteps of fellow Democrat Keith Ellison of Minnesota. Interestingly, neither Carson nor Ellison was born Muslim. Ellison was raised Catholic; Carson grew up Baptist. ...
Slate is publishing a set of dispatches this week about Israel's newest tourism innovation: the "Ultimate Counter-Terrorism Mission," which is "packed full of visits to military bases, security briefings from members of Mossad and Shin Bet, and stops for fine dining." The dispatches are fascinating and well worth reading in themselves, but I was particularly struck by an anecdote...
Whatever will Fox News do now? Not even the Pentagon still believes that Saddam had operational ties to al Qaeda:An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network. The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled...
The so-called "doomsday" seed vault opened recently in Norway. It's a remarkable venture — and an even more remarkable piece of engineering:"This is a frozen Garden of Eden," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said at the opening ceremony Tuesday, as guests carried the first seed deposits into the icy vault, deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote...
I've always loved the Billboard Liberation Front's unique brand of civil disobedience, but this time they've outdone themselves: Here's a snippet from the accompanying "Press Release":February 27, 2008 San Francisco, CA The Billboard Liberation Front today announced a major new advertising improvement campaign executed on behalf of clients AT&T and the National Security Agency. Focusing on billboards in the San Francisco area, this...
Readers who enjoyed our recent symposium on Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule's book Terror in the Balance will definitely want to check out Alice Ristroph's review of the book in the new issue of the Green Bag. This is no ordinary review — serious, respectful, dispassionate. Indeed, Alice's bete noire is precisely the tendency, so prevalent in the...
At Prawfsblawg today, my friend — and national-security law expert — Steve Vladeck discusses what the reversal of Mohammed Munaf's conviction means for his Supreme Court case. Here is a snippet:Munaf's habeas petition is one of two brought by U.S. citizens detained in Iraq set to be argued before the Supreme Court later this month (and in which I...
At IntLawGrrls, our colleague Naomi Norberg notes that Cuba has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Like Naomi, I believe that the decision is a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, I think that the International Herald Tribune article to which Naomi links is somewhat...
Shocking legal news out of Iraq — the Court of Cassation has reversed the conviction of Mohammed Munaf, the US citizen sentenced to death for helping kidnap three Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005:Munaf's lawyer, Joseph Margulies, said the Iraqi Court of Cassation reversed the conviction and sentence because it could not determine the role Munaf and other defendants played...
Continuing their fractured ways — last week they failed to agree on provincial elections — Iraq's Presidency Council is still fighting over the death sentences of Ali Hassan al-Majid, Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai, and Hussein Rashid Mohammed. They have agreed that Chemical Ali should hang, but VP Tariq al-Hashemi continues to oppose executing the other two:Prime Minister Nouri...
For what it's worth — a question about which I will remain steadfastly agnostic — Opinio Juris has been ranked the 19th most influential law blog for 2007. The rankings, which were created by TheRacetotheBottom.org, are based on traffic, links, and citations. Here is the list:1. Volokh Conspiracy 2. Sentencing Law and Policy 3. Jurist-Paper Chase 4. Instapundit.com 5. Balkanization 6. Concurring Opinions 7. Hugh Hewitt's...
