DAVID COLE Professor at Georgetown University Law Center, Cole said today: “The conviction shows that the government did not need to assert the extraordinary power to detain Padilla without charges for several years. But at the same time, because of how they treated Padilla in detention and others in CIA black sites, the government was…

“The Bush administration is preparing to declare that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is a foreign terrorist organization,” the New York Times reports. It would be “the first time that the United States has added the armed forces of any sovereign government to its list of terrorist organizations.” REESE ERLICH Erlich, the author of the forthcoming…

Rev. MEL WHITE Rev. White said today: “Karl Rove scapegoated gays to win elections, first for Congress and then for president.” White is a former ghostwriter for fellow evangelicals, including Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Jim Bakker, and Jerry Falwell. He is president of Soul Force, a group using the nonviolence methods of Gandhi and Martin…

ROBERT NAIMAN National coordinator and senior policy analyst at Just Foreign Policy, Naiman said: “Just Foreign Policy is publishing updated estimates of Iraqi deaths due to the U.S. invasion and occupation starting in 2003. And the way that we constructed this estimate is to extrapolate from the Lancet study that was published last fall. “The…

August 9 is the 62nd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. WILLIAM D. HARTUNG Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the New America Foundation. He said today: “Even more so than Hiroshima, the U.S. decision drop a second atomic bomb — this time on Nagasaki —…

Iraqis oppose plans to open the country’s oilfields to foreign investment by a ratio of two to one, according to a poll released yesterday. ANTONIA JUHASZ Juhasz is the author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time and a fellow with Oil Change International. She said today: “For the first…

With only two dissenting votes in the entire Senate and House, the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964 — clearing the path to escalate the war in Vietnam. Passage of the measure came after the Johnson administration falsely claimed that U.S. vessels in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of…

The New York Times reports: “[Senator Barack Obama’s] remarks about removing nuclear weapons as an option in the region [Afghanistan or Pakistan] drew fresh attacks from Democratic rivals who had already questioned his foreign policy experience. American officials have generally been deliberately ambiguous about their nuclear strike policies.” JIM WALSH Walsh is a research associate…

President Bush has announced that he would veto any expansion in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health insurance for children in low-income families. Congress will be considering legislation to renew or expand funding for the program this week. On Monday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote: “When a child is enrolled…

The House is expected to debate the Fiscal Year 2008 “Defense appropriations” bill this week. WILLIAM HARTUNG Director of the Arms and Security Project at the New America Foundation, Hartung said today: “While Democratic leaders in the House talk about withdrawing from Iraq and closing Guantanamo, the only action that will come out of this…