Immediately after Barack Hussein Obama won a second national election, there were murmurs on the right about adapting to new political realities. The blustery coalition of conservative Christians, emissaries from the Old South, and the Chamber of Commerce that has blocked progressive change since the end of the last century now confronts its endgame. Yet […]

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1. Amnesty International Amnesty International is engaged in a campaign to pressure President Obama to close the U.S. prison at Guantánamo. 2. National Religious Campaign Against Torture NRCAT is lobbying the White House and Congress to create an independent commission of inquiry on torture. 3. Open Society Justice Initiative The Justice Initiative has sued Romania […]

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In late February, the United States Supreme Court will review Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The decision by these nine justices could uphold generations of voting rights protections, or, adversely, this Court—by modifying or rejecting Section 5—could allow many of the racially discriminatory voting practices blocked in 2012 to re-emerge. While we were […]

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Almost a decade after he was kidnapped and forcibly disappeared by Macedonian officials acting at the behest of the CIA, Khaled El-Masri has finally secured a measure of redress. After years of denial in Skopje (capital of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), stonewalling in Berlin and silence in Washington, the European Court of Human […]

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In July 2007, George W. Bush invited the families of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks to the White House Rose Garden signing of the Voting Rights 
Act. The 25-year extension of civil rights legislation enacted in 1965 passed by a 98-0 vote in the Senate and by 390-33 in the […]

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