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WASHINGTON - The Senate Judiciary Committee today has begun to consider legislation that would strip federal courts of their jurisdiction and take away defendant’s safeguards against being wrongfully convicted and even executed. The committee will continue to consider this legislation after the August recess. The American Civil Liberties Union opposes this bill, saying it unconstitutionally violates the doctrine of Separation of Powers and threatens the independence of the federal judiciary. (…)

Witnesses said police moved in at 11.30am with officers carrying machine guns and wearing gas masks, and they sealed off Tavistock Road and the adjoining crescent.
BREAKING NEWS: ARMED SEIGE IN LONDON !
Armed police have surrounded flats in West London.
They seem to be centering on a house in Notting Hill inhabited by someone called "Mohammed"...
The streets have been cordoned off and there have been several shots.
[www.libertyforum.org]
Elefantstone (agitator) 07/29/05 05:53 (…)

The Computer Really Did Eat Their Votes, and They Are Still Mad!
The CARTERET COALITION FOR VERIFIED VOTING (CCVV), a non partisan grassroots group announces the release of a video message to North Carolina lawmakers and to the rest of the country:
The message is available online here, watch this compelling reality tv style video: Windows machines try (this uses Windows Media Player) Other machines use (this uses Quick-time, doesn’t seem to work on Windows machines well) (It’s (…)

[Corrected version to INCLUDE GRAPHICS]
KARL ROVE and VARIOUS SPIES HE IS LINKED TO
Karl Rove’s only full-time foreign-policy advisor is Michael Ledeen, a rabid anti-Arab, pro-Israel activist. The FBI is investigating Ledeen for procuring forged documents (shown here) on nonexistent WMD, which George Bush used to justify his war on Iraq. When Joseph Wilson exposed the farce, Rove helped "out" Wilson’s CIA wife. Did Ledeen procure the documents for Rove, and how might he have done (…)

Part 1: To all non-U.S. world members: Help us! We have been captured by our own! They are holding us, Iraq, and all of you hostage. Immediate intervention is needed. The UN needs to issue warrants for the arrest of the entire current U.S. administration, to be charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, breaking the code of the Geneva Convention, torture, blackmail, lying to the world about weapons of mass destruction, unprovoked aggression and war against another country, murdering (…)

South Africa needs to revise its approach to land reform to end racial inequalities, government officials say.
At a national land summit in Johannesburg, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said the current market-based approach was not working.
Landless people’s activists remained sceptical about the announcement.
Eighty per cent of agricultural land is owned by white South Africans, who make up only 10% of the population - the legacy of apartheid laws.
Since coming to power in (…)

by Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON - The U.S. House of Representatives will decide the fate of the controversial Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) this week in what many analysts predict will be a very close vote, prompting a spate of intensified lobbying by opponents and advocates of the deal, including Pres. George W. Bush.
Bush made a rare visit Wednesday to Capitol Hill to convene a private meeting with hesitant House Republicans he hopes to talk into backing legislation to close (…)

Labor’s Big Split: Pain Before Gain
By Harold Meyerson
CHICAGO — In the annals of labor leave-taking, it was neither as contentious as Mineworkers President John L. Lewis’s departure from the 1935 AFL convention, when he decked the president of the Carpenters Union on his way out, nor as arrogantly dismissive as one of Lewis’s later farewells, when he penned a note to AFL President William Green that read, simply: "Green — We disaffiliate — Lewis."
But yesterday’s announcement by the (…)

Recount story a surprise to Bush
Governor says Roberts’ role `news to me’
By John Kennedy
TALLAHASSEE · Gov. Jeb Bush said Wednesday that he was surprised by a report that U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts played an influential role in Florida’s 2000 presidential recount, insisting that "my relationship with him lasted about 30 minutes."
The governor, whose brother, President Bush, won the White House after the high court stopped the Florida recount by a 5-4 vote, said he (…)

The London Police’s Mossad-style Execution of a ’Suspect’
by Professor John Gardner
Police state:
Like many of my fellow-Londoners I am less alarmed by suicide bombers than I am by the police’s Mossad-style execution of a ’suspect’ (who turned out to be a completely innocent passer-by) on Friday 22 July. This is not because we are at greater risk of death at the hands of the police than at the hands of the bombers. (Both risks are pretty tiny, but of the two the risk posed by the (…)