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Sam Sacks has 859 articles published.

Five Prisoners Transferred Out Of Guantanamo

The Pentagon announced over the weekend the release of several detainees from Guantanamo Bay, bringing the population at the notorious prison camp down to 107. According to a Department of Defense press release on Sunday, five individuals were transferred to the custody of the United Arab Emirates after each had been cleared for release by an interagency government review board. The ongoing detention of Ali Ahmad Muhammad al-Razihi, Khalid Abd-al-Jabbar Muhammad Uthman al-Qadasi, Adil Said al-Hajj Ubayd al-Busays, Sulayman Awad Bin Uqayl al-Nahdi, and Fahmi… Keep Reading

As White House Mulls Guantanamo Executive Action, McCain Threatens Lawsuit

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) threatened to sue the Obama administration if it unilaterally attempts to shutdown the military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Speaking to The Hill this week, the Senate Armed Services Committee chair said he “would want to go to court,” should President Obama move to close the notorious facility without Congressional approval. The White House could claim that under Article 2 of the Constitution, the president is Commander in Chief in charge of both troop movements and military prisoner movements, and thus has… Keep Reading

Fiorina, Who Once Assisted the NSA, Says CFPB Will Cause 1984 Scenario

During Tuesday’s night GOP presidential debate Carly Fiorina accused a government agency that polices banks of conducting a dragnet on financial consumers. She declined to mention, however, that she once abetted the government in conducting illegal surveillance more than a decade ago. In a screed reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s 1961 vinyl recording, in which he spoke out against “Socialized Medicine,” a.k.a. Medicare, Fiorina claimed that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is engaged in mass domestic espionage and part of a plot to enact totalitarianism in the US.… Keep Reading

Rubio’s Militarism Attacked Both On And Off Debate Stage

In one of the most heated exchanges during the Republican Presidential Primary debate in Wisconsin Tuesday night, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) attacked Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) plan to significantly increase defense spending. The pair went toe-to-toe over what Sen. Paul called an unpaid for “trillion dollar military expenditure,” prompting another conservative lawmaker to jump into the fray on social media. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, took to Twitter to knock the Florida Senator’s war mongering. “For @marcorubio to lecture on foreign… Keep Reading

Senate Democrats: Executive Agencies “Can’t Handle The Truth” About C.I.A. Torture

Executive department policies that prohibit staff from reading the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report released last year have drawn the ire of lawmakers. According to the New York Times on Tuesday, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the Pentagon are all in receipt of the 6,700-page classified report on the CIA’s post 9/11 enhanced interrogation program, but all have declined to even open it. The dismissal of the findings runs counter to the urging of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the author of the report,… Keep Reading

White House Bid To Protect Undocumented Families Suffers Setback In Courts

Immigrant families living in the United States were put at increased risk of break-up Monday after a federal appeals court blocked President Obama’s executive order deferring the deportation of millions of undocumented individuals. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld a lower court’s decision that prohibited the administration from implementing the order, ruling that it was an unconstitutional power grab. The lawsuit was brought by 26 Republican state Attorneys General, led by Texas AG Ken Paxton. “The president must follow the rule of… Keep Reading

Following Keystone XL’s Defeat, U.N. Releases Troubling New Climate Data

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced Monday that greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere continued their “relentless rise” in 2014, suggesting that the fight against climate change will require far more than just the rejection of a pipeline. Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, reached a new high last year of 397.7 parts per million, the data showed. The organization also reported that global CO2 averages recorded in the spring of 2015 “crossed the symbolically significant” 400-ppm barrier. “We will… Keep Reading

Senators Decry ‘Backroom Deal,’ Seek to Stop Copper Mine on Sacred Apache Lands

Three Senators are adding their names to the list of lawmakers seeking to block the sale of public land in Arizona to an offshore mining company, saying that the transaction infringes upon American Indians’ rights. The legislation, introduced by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), would repeal a provision jammed into last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that green-lighted the purchase of portions of the Tonto National Forest Lands and Oak Flat for the purpose of building a foreign block… Keep Reading

Democratic Lawmaker Reacts To TPP: “Worse Than We Thought”

The White House released the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal on Thursday, and it was immediately followed by shade cast from the President’s own party. In the earliest reaction to the release of the pact, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) took to social media with the hashtag #TPPWorseThanWeThought. “#TPP e-commerce chapter undermines consumer #privacy for sensitive personal data (health, financial, and more),” she tweeted Thursday morning. Now that all 30 chapters and 2,000 pages of the deal are out in the open,… Keep Reading

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