Prosecutors Investigate Innocence Project Students
A rather bizarre case in Illinois -- even by the standards of that state. For more than a decade, classes of students at Northwestern University’s journalism school have been scrutinizing the work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crimes, as part of the Medill Innocence Project, have helped lead to the release of 11 inmates, the project’s director ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 26, 2009 08:51
Lockerbie Bomber Released
As has been anticipated, the man who murdered 270 people by bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, has been given a compassionate release from prison so that he may spend his dying days with his family. [caption id="attachment_40972" align="aligncenter" width="550" caption="Abdel Basset al-Megrahi (L) walks up the stairs to a waiting jet at Glasgow airport August 20, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 20, 2009 12:35
Obama Continues Indefinite Detention of Terrorism Suspects
Rusty Shackleford: Bush-Hitler: Holding terrorists indefinitely without charge in Gitmo. Hope-Change: Holding terrorists indefinitely without charge somewhere else. As Jacob Sullum notes in much more thorough post, it's a natural consequence of the Obama administration's continuing the Bush perspective that we're at war with terrorists. In Holder's view, then, we are engaged in a war that started years before we noticed it and may ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 20, 2009 06:50
Former Gitmo Inmate Now al Qaeda Leader
There has been quite a bit of blogospheric reaction to the news that two former inmates at Gitmo appeared in an al Qaeda video: [caption id="attachment_30562" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shahri (Formerly Prisoner 372)"][/caption] Two men released from the US "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have appeared in a video posted on a ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on January 25, 2009 07:49
Why Words Matter
In criticizing Barack Obama today, Andy McCarthy makes the claim that Barack Obama wants to end prison sentences for violent offenders.Not to be a broken record, but it’s worth recalling that Obama gave a rave review to former terrorist Bill Ayers’s polemic against the criminal justice system, A Kind and Just Parent. More radical than even the Warren Court, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 27, 2008 14:25
British Burglars Could Go Free!
The United Kingdom is seriously considering doing away with prison sentences for scores of "lesser" crimes, Home Affairs Correspondent Tom Whitehead reports for the Daily Express. Hundreds of thousands of crooks could escape jail every year under the proposals by advisers to the Lord Chief Justice. Those sentenced to short, sharp shock jail terms of less than 12 months for “less ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 9, 2008 15:54
Meaningful Bloggers
James Q. Wilson asks of himself, "Can I Be a Meaningful Blogger?" and quickly demonstrates that, alas, he can not. Or, at least, will not. Wilson is an extremely bright and accomplished fellow. Certainly, he's ten times the social scientist that I'll ever be. But perhaps the things which made him so successful as a scholar have impeded ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 11, 2008 08:38
Military Interrogators Urged to Destroy Evidence
Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, who is serving as the defense attorney for Canadian citizen Omar Khadr's war crimes trial (previously discussed on OTB here) has divulged that the Pentagon has been urging interrogators in Guantanamo Bay to destroy all of their notes regarding their interrogation of detainees.The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to destroy handwritten notes in case they ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 10, 2008 10:09
Iraq and Afghanistan Winnable Wars
Anthony Cordesman, a longtime Iraq War skeptic and administration critic, argued in yesterday's Washington Post that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are "winnable." It's a tightly written piece that defies excerpting but here is the crux of it: No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 25, 2008 07:01
Barack Obama’s Cult of Personality (Updated)
In a column entitled "Hate Springs Eternal," Paul Krugman decries the rancor of the Democratic primary contest, which he likens to the style of Richard Nixon. I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 11, 2008 07:24
Greetings
While James and Kim head to Aruba to try and straighten out the criminal justice system down there, I will be helping to fill in. For those unfamiliar with me, I am an Associate Professor of Political Science at Troy University (where James and I were colleagues for several years) and have been blogging at PoliBlog for about two weeks less ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on December 20, 2007 17:47
Jose Padilla Convicted on Terrorist Charges
Jose Padilla has finally been found guilty of major terrorism charges. Jose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges Thursday after being held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration's zeal to stop homegrown terror. Padilla, a U.S. citizen from Chicago, was once accused of being part of an ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 16, 2007 15:08
Duke Settles with Lacrosse Players
Duke University has agreed to a settlement with the lacrosse players who were falsely accused of rape and then hung out to dry by university administrators and faculty. Duke University has reached a settlement with each of the three former lacrosse players and their families. The university made the announcement this afternoon. According to a press release issued by Duke, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 18, 2007 16:45
Unnecessary Scandal
Charles Krauthammer argues that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign or be fired sooner rather than later for his handling of the U.S. Attorney firing mess. It's not a question of probity, but of competence. Gonzales has allowed a scandal to be created where there was none. That is quite an achievement. He had a two-foot putt and he muffed it. How ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 23, 2007 13:20
Iraqi Police Training Botched?
Lee Hamilton and Ed Meese have told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the training of Iraq's police and judges has been mishandled. The U.S. erred by first assigning the task of shaping the judicial system in a largely lawless country to the State Department and private contractors who "did not have the expertise or the manpower to get the job done," ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on January 31, 2007 10:15
