California's system for imposing and carrying out the death penalty is so long and drawn-out that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and thus is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
Ruling in the case of Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was condemned to death in 1995 and has yet to be executed, Judge Cormac J. Carney of the U.S. Central District of California said that to take "nearly a generation" to decide on Jones' appeals was unconstitutional.
As part of the ruling, Carney vacated the death penalty sentence in Jones' case.
U.S. judge rules California death penalty system unconstitutional
League City,Texas bans undocumented children
The League City council passed a resolution on Tuesday night to ban undocumented children from entering the municipality.
League City Council Member Heidi Thiess drafted the measure, which declines to accept federal requests to operate detention or processing centers in the city. "Health and safety" concerns were cited among the reasons for the proposed ordinance.
New York City newspaper refers to President Obama as 'N*****' in headline
A local New York City newspaper is putting itself on the map in a big way thanks an op-ed by author James Lincoln Collier with the title "The [Expletive] in the White House."
In the headline, the WestView News of NYC's West Village used the racial slur to refer to President Barack Obama.
Underneath Collier's piece, which actually argued that "far right voters hate Obama because he is black," the paper ran another op-ed written by African-American columnist Alvin Hall called, "The Headline Offends Me."
Blackwater death threat is said to have stifled U.S. inquiry
Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad's Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor's operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater's top manager there issued a threat: "that he could kill" the government's chief investigator and "no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq," according to department reports.
U.S. Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy's relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports.
Oklahoma inmates file lawsuit over 'unconstitutional' executions
A group of Oklahoma death row inmates filed a federal lawsuit against state officials on Wednesday, arguing their executions would violate the constitution and amount to human experimentation on prisoners after a botched execution earlier this year.
Lawyers filed the complaint on behalf of 20 men and one woman in the US district court for the western district of Oklahoma against the state’s corrections director Robert Patton, Oklahoma State Penitentiary warden Anita Trammell, members of the board of corrections and unnamed people involved in lethal injection.
Bin Laden 'demon toy' and three other wacky CIA plots
The Central Intelligence Agency secretly developed an Osama bin Laden action figure whose face peeled off to reveal a scary devil beneath, according to an account first published this week in The Washington Post.
The 2005 effort was meant to produce a toy that could be distributed in Afghanistan. The point was to frighten children and their parents and lower their esteem for the then-hidden Al Qaeda leader, said the Post.
Hobby Lobby aims for Obamacare win, Christian nation
The evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby made a fortune selling crafts supplies and made headlines fighting government-mandated birth control coverage. They’re also using their billions to sell the American public on the literal truth of scripture — through a public-school Bible curriculum, a huge museum around the corner from the Smithsonian and public forums on the faith of the founding fathers.
The Green family may be best known in secular circles for their lawsuit against Obamacare, a high-stakes — and highly political — case that could undercut the administration’s goal of setting minimum standards for health care coverage. By the end of this month, the Supreme Court will decide if the federal government can force the Greens to include methods of contraception they deem sinful as part of employees’ health insurance.
More Articles...
Page 78 of 220