NewsTrust - Law Enforcement - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Mass incarceration and criminal justice in America.

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New Yorker - Jan. 23 (Opinion) - A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life is mostly undramatic—the reported stories fail to grab us, because, for the most part, nothing happ

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SEC No Evil

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Countdown - By Keith Olbermann, Matt Taibbi - Aug. 19 (Interview) - 'In this 'Countdown' exclusive interview, Keith sits down with Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi to discuss breaking the story about the Securities and Exchange Commission destroying the records of promising cases in the years leading up to the financial meltdown.'

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Call Off the Global Drug War

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Jimmy Carter - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - To make drug policies more humane and more effective, the U.S. should rehabilitate non-violent, casual drug users, and undermine the power of organized crime.

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The Abuse of Private Manning

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Mar. 15 (Editorial) - The treatment of the soldier accused of giving government files to WikiLeaks conjures creepy memories of how terror suspects were handled during the Bush years.

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US economics: One big Ponzi scheme

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Aljazeera - By Danny Schlecter - Feb. 20 (Opinion) - While Bernie Madoff languishes in jail, bankers continue to profit as the poor lose their homes and hope.

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Analysis: Why we shouldn’t ban bull’s-eyes

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Yahoo! News - By Ken Paulson - Jan. 12 (Opinion) - A Pennsylvania congressman is targeting bull's-eyes. In the wake of the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and the murder of federal Judge John Roll, Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pa., says he plans legislation that would ban language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening federal officials and members of Congress.

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Why the DREAM Act needs its next act

Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - By Daniel Altschuler - Dec. 30 (Opinion) - 2010 began with promise for advocates of immigration reform, but it ended with a stark reminder of the obstacles they face.

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Mr Ainsworth is right: the war has failed

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - Dec. 17 (Editorial) - It is depressing how stale and weary have been the responses to the suggestion from the former Labour Cabinet minister, Bob Ainsworth, that many recreational drugs should be decriminalised. The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, issued a swift denunciation of the former minister's "irresponsible ideas" saying they did not reflect the view of the leader, party or public. When the Prime Minister's office was asked whether Mr Ainsworth's ideas merited consideration, it issued a one-word answer: No.

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A Wiki hornets' nest

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - The most important legacy of the WikiLeaks affair will almost surely be the rapidly escalating cyberwar that the group's renegade disclosures have sparked. If you think you're unaffected by unseen "battles" fought with keystrokes instead of bullets, you're wrong. At stake are issues of free speech, censorship, privacy, piracy, sovereignty and corporate power.

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The secret Wall Street bailout

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Aljazeera - By Danny Schechter - Dec. 12 (Opinion) - Wall Street: master of puppets The myth that the media continues to truck in, is that somehow the Congress and the President are in charge of the economy. They aren't. Wall Street and the corporate world are clearly running the show, with little restraint so far, effective oversight or regulation. Back to Degraw: "The Federal Reserve was secretly throwing around our money in unprecedented fashion, and it wasn’t just to the usual suspects like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.; it was to the entire Global Banking Cartel. To central banks throughout the world: Australia, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, England… To the Fed’s foreign primary dealers like Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), Royal Bank of Scotland (UK), Barclays (UK), BNP Paribas (France)… All their Ponzi players were 'gifted.' All the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations got their cut."

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Julian Assange's Great Luck

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Jack Shafer - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - Although a stay in stir and the prospect of Swedish prosecution might not sound appealing or even advantageous, it's actually a lucky break for Assange. I don't expect him to express his gratitude publicly, but I'll bet he's gamed out how to turn the Swedish arrest warrant, the extradition hearing, and beyond to his benefit.

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War and Speech

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Dahlia Lithwick - Nov. 26 (Opinion) - There seems to be no one answer to why there hasn't been a single important First Amendment protest case in the last decade. It's certainly not that the court is reluctant to rule on First Amendment issues altogether. The Supreme Court has taken up a surprising number of speech cases recently. But right now the court is more interested in crush videos, gay marriage bans, anti-Hillary Clinton movies, violent video games, corporate speech, and funeral protests than in the rights of people to criticize government wars. What does this say about the war on terror? And what does it say about what Americans care about most?

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Republicans can't talk about immigration enforcement

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Ruben Navarrette Jr. - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - What is it about the immigration debate that makes Republicans in Congress act like children?

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Violence breeds violence. The only thing drug gangs fear is legalisation

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Aug. 26 (Opinion) - A chief of the Mafia Cruenza, one of the biggest drug gangs in the 1980s, was recorded expressing his gratitude for the war on drugs as 'good for business'

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Borderlines

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By William Finnegan - Jul. 23 (Opinion) - The southern border, far from being “unsecured,” is in better shape than it has been for years—better managed and less porous. It has been the beneficiary of security-budget increases since September 11th, which have helped slow the pace of illegal entries, if not as dramatically as the economic crash did. Violent crime, though rising in Mexico, has fallen this side of the border: in Southwestern border counties it has dropped more than thirty per cent in the past two decades. It’s down in Senator McCain’s Arizona. According to F.B.I. statistics, the four safest big cities in the United States—San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, and Austin—are all in border states.

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Humane tweak to immigration enforcement

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Dallas Morning News - Jul. 16 (Editorial) - Jobs are generally the reason migrants come here illegally. Those who employ illegal immigrants deserve to be named and shamed so that the magnet of work ceases to exist. That said, comprehensive immigration reform is essential, including provisions for a greatly expanded guest-worker program that gives businesses greater access to low-cost -- and legal -- immigrant labor.

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A Good Day for Judicial Discretion

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jun. 15 (Editorial) - Two heartening Supreme Court decisions suggest that, even on a conservative court, the letter of the law has its limits. Equity is an elusive legal concept that occasionally allows some leeway in applying the rules of the law and is often unappreciated by judges who insist the law means only what it says. That was clear in 2008 when the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit refused to allow federal courts to consider a death-penalty conviction of Albert Holland because his lawyer had inexcusably let the filing deadline pass. Fortunately, seven members of the Supreme Court proved less rigid in their thinking on Monday and reversed that blinkered decision.

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The Best Case Against Arizona's Immigration Law: The Experience of Greater Phoenix

Tue, 18 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Conor Friedersdorf - May. 18 (Opinion) - Can local police officers be trusted to target illegal immigrants without engaging in racial profiling? Will the deportation of illegal immigrants save taxpayer money? Is enforcement at the city or county level a prudent use of local resources?

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The predictable tragedies of Arizona's anti-immigrant law

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - May. 01 (Opinion) - think the conservatives who've decided to leap to the defense of the Arizona law need to think a bit harder about why Republican governors like Texas's Rick Perry and Florida's Jeb Bush (ex-governor, I know) are loudly opposing this bill.

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Crunch time for well-fed cockroach of the world financial system

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Sydney Morning Herald - By Peter Hartcher - Apr. 20 (Comment) - Who was advising the Greek government, knowing it was borrowing way too much, when it decided to hide some of its debt in 2001? It was the vaunted Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, which showed Greece how to use complex securities to conceal billions in debt in return for about $US300 million in fees. As Greece hit crisis point this year, who was advising it on where to turn for emergency loans, arranging meetings with potential lenders in China and elsewhere? Yes, it was that very same cock of the Wall Street walk, Goldman Sachs. And, finally, who helped set up a big market to bet on whether Greece and other European countries would go broke and default on their debts?

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An old, sad story at a West Virginia mine

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By E.J. Dionne Jr. - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - Blankenship is also a poster child for why we need campaign finance laws and why recent moves by the U.S. Supreme Court to weaken them are so dangerous. Blankenship spent $3 million to help elect a justice to the West Virginia Supreme Court who then twice provided the key vote that set aside a $50 million jury verdict against Massey Energy.

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The Hutaree militia and the rising risk of far-right violence

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - Mar. 30 (Opinion) - The arrests of members of a Michigan-based "Christian" militia group should convince doubters that there is good reason to worry about right-wing, anti-government extremism -- and potential violence -- in the Age of Obama.

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Obama Should Tackle the Jails

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Newsweek - By Ellis Cose - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - The subject deserves presidential attention. But to tackle it requires a willingness to risk being tarred as soft on crime. That's an especially difficult issue for a black president: for Obama to speak the simple truth—that our incarceration practices are expensive, ineffective, and border on insanity—would open him up to the charge of pandering to minorities. We saw that a few months back when Obama initially sided with black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., whom a white cop had arrested for breaking into his own home. The president's relatively mild statement—that the cop had acted "stupidly"—drew so much fire he had to backpedal. Precisely because of his race, this president must walk on eggshells when approaching a racially charged subject. Much safer to talk about deficits and jobs.

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Hanging a ‘For Sale’ Sign Over the Judiciary

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Dorothy Samuels - Jan. 29 (Opinion) - States must enact reforms to protect the integrity of their court systems now that corporate money can be used in judicial campaigns.

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Wanted: Tony Blair for war crimes. Arrest him and claim your reward

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Jan. 26 (Opinion) - Chilcot and the courts won't do it, so it is up to us to show that we won't let an illegal act of mass murder go unpunished The only question that counts is the one that the Chilcot inquiry won't address: was the war with Iraq illegal? If the answer is yes, everything changes. The war is no longer a political matter, but a criminal one, and those who commissioned it should be committed for trial for what the Nuremberg tribunal called "the supreme international crime": the crime of aggression. But there's a problem with official inquiries in the United Kingdom: the government appoints their members and sets their terms of reference. It's the equivalent of a criminal suspect being allowed to choose what the charges should be, who should judge ...

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