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By Marjorie Cohn President Barack Obama escalated the drone war he has conducted for the past five and a half years by declaring his intention to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, or ISIL. Since August 8, Obama has mounted at least 154…

By Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law With Cheney – key architect of the torture – speaking yesterday about Obama recognizing the ” pacific role of American power” and President Obama laying out the plans for addressing the problem of ISIS a couple…

 By Marjorie Cohn Three weeks after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) published a report detailing how the United States has failed to fulfill its legal obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All…

Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law Leaving the dead body shot by the police of an unarmed young black man (in this case Michael Brown)  for four hours in the middle of the street in a former sundown town in a border state is…

Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law Just watched Evan Kohlmann and Michael O’Hanlon on Hardball discussing the latest awful murderous thing that ISIS has done. They were fanning the flames of war. Here is the way it looks from Toledo.

 By Marjorie Cohn The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), Center for Constitutional Rights, International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Arab Lawyers Union, and American Association of Jurists (Asociacion Americana de Juristas) sent a letter [https://www.nlg.org/sites/default/files/Letter%20to%20ICC%20Prosecutor%20Gaza%20FINAL.pdf] on Friday, August 22 to Fatou Bensouda, Prosecutor of the International Criminal…

SALT is proud to announce Professor Margaret Kwoka (University of Denver) as the winner of the 2014 Junior Faculty Teaching Award.  Among the twelve nominees, Professor Kwoka demonstrated an ongoing commitment to involving social justice themes in her teaching.  She has consistently embodied the mission of SALT through her…

By Marjorie Cohn By sending vast amounts of military aid to Israel, members of the US Congress, President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel have aided and abetted the commission of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity by Israeli officials and…

By Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. Took my 88 year old…

(This post first appeared on Moyers & Company on July 18, 2014) by Ian Haney López, John H. Boalt Professor of Law, UC Berkeley, Senior Fellow, Demos Writing recently in The New York Times, Thomas Edsall linked race, genes and political ideology. Edsall, a journalism professor at…

By Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/01/235182/obama-adds-fuel-to-cia-controversy.html) WASHINGTON: Citing redactions, Feinstein delays release of report on CIA interrogations | National Security & Defense | McClatchy DC Just sick of this Executive Branch mendacity – seems to be part of the…

By Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law “One former official said that in practice, the CIA briefed Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, on the program and she then briefed…

By Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor Law, University of Toledo College of Law Obama admits on August 1, 2014 that the United States tortured Al-Qaeda detainee suspects after 9/11. Let us take a minute to reflect on that admission. Am I the only one who remembers…

Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law “But it is also part of another story of which we can be proud,” (adds the document, which was circulating this week among White House officials and which the White House…

Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law I understand that Secretary of State John Kerry is being called in a kind of pejorative way a “nudnik” which I understand is defined as “a person who is a bore or nuisance” in the…

Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law Why do the “flies on the eyes” guys (nickname of Cofer Black in the Bush Administration) who are no longer public servants and are ordinary citizens get to see the unredacted full Senate Intelligence Committee…

By Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law Over at the Toledo Blade on July 27, 2014 they published my op-ed entitled “Workers Consciences Deserve Protection Too” (http://m.toledoblade.com/Op-Ed-Columns/2014/07/27/Workers-consciences-deserve-protection-too.html).  In the comments sections we have had some interesting exchanges there. One…

By Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law Sir Sly – Gold (betablock3r remix) Each of us has our dream. Peoples have their dreams. In every period among each people there are the hard men and hard women. The hard…

By Benjamin G. Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of Toledo College of Law A friend of mine’s daughter characterized the Hobby Lobby decision as “Corporations are people, women are not.” Out of the mouth of babes and a decision that so offends my sincere religious…

By SpearIt This year marks the twenty-year anniversary of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill, the legislative bombshell that effectively eliminated higher education in prison. This massive crime bill contained a provision that barred prisoners from receiving Pell grant funding; in a flash, hundreds of programs closed down.