GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA – I was privileged to be one of six representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) invited by the Office of Military Commissions to observe the guilty plea of Ibrahim al Qosi here in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, yesterday. The other invitees were the ACLU, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the National Institute of Military Justice (NIMJ). Each of those organizations have been highly critical of military commissions, denouncing them as unfair, unjust, unnecessary, not in keeping with the rule of law, and not fair compared …
Amnesty International has a new slogan designed to drum up support for the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty: it’s calling on its supporters to demand a “bullet-proof” treaty. That’s cute. Unfortunately, what’s cute is not necessarily good policy, as Amnesty’s slogan illustrates all too clearly. It explicitly demands a treaty that “control[s] all arms and ammunition and their parts.” Leaving aside any Second Amendment considerations, this is insane. Controlling the “parts” of “all arms,” ranging from bullets to battleships, would mean controlling every substantial part and industrial process in the world. …
This fall the Supreme Court will hear two cases from Florida challenging a state’s ability to sentence violent juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole. Long unquestioned, life without parole for the very worst juvenile offenders only recently came under fire after Justice Anthony M. Kennedy reasoned in the majority opinion in Roper v Simmons that since teenagers are susceptible to negative influences, including peer pressure, capital punishment violated their 8th Amendment rights. Leftist activists have seized on this language, and are mounting a coordinated misinformation campaign to …
