News & Commentary

Today, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California (ACLU SoCal) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles are appearing before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to enforce the rights of U.S. citizen Naji Hamdan, a Muslim-American man from Southern California, to find out whether the U.S. government was involved in the torture that he experienced in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.).

By Noa Yachot, @NoaYachot

In 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, an act that authorized the indefinite detention of "Americans of Japanese ancestry." As a result, over 110,000 Japanese Americans residing on the West Coast were forced from their homes and imprisoned without trial in overcrowded and unsanitary internment camps. Because of their race, these Americans lost their freedom to the specter of a national security threat.

Should the government be allowed to lie to the courts in the name of national security? This is the question that judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will have to consider in the next few weeks.

ACLU of Southern California Deputy Legal Director Ahilan Arulanantham argued yesterday before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, defending a simple position: when the U.S. government lies to a court, it should not go unpunished.

In 2010, the ACLU put out an ad featuring a picture of President Obama morphing over several frames into a picture of President Bush and asking, "What will it be, Mr. President? Change or more of the same?" Now, we may need to revise it, because while Obama definitely seems intent on more of the same, he looks and sounds more and more like President Nixon.

By Brett Kaufman, Legal Fellow, ACLU National Security Project Today, ProPublica published an important and illuminating news article and accompanying interactive web feature that demonstrates just how duplicitous the government is being regarding the CIA’s targeted killing program.

By Michael Kaufman, Staff Attorney This past week, I traveled to Guantánamo Bay to observe military commission hearings, continuing the ACLU’s long-standing commitment to be present at each and every hearing of these deeply flawed tribunals. Six days of pre-trial hearings were scheduled in the capital cases of the five defendants alleged to have participated in the 9/11 attacks. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans and the hearings were postponed due to Tropical Storm Isaac’s then-imminent arrival. But during my brief time in GTMO, I had a window into the military commission proceedings that left me deeply concerned about their fairness and legitimacy.

By Nusrat Choudhury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s secretive No Fly List should go forward. This decision is a true victory for our clients and all Americans.