Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced yesterday that he would retire effective immediately. Washington immediately lurched into its next crisis, with Republicans and the right wing gloating about controlling the Supreme Court.
On the regular Thursday series "Criminal Injustice," about the most egregious conduct of our courts and prosecutors and how justice is denied to so many people in this country, the hosts discuss a new bipartisan bill in Congress that would expand the president's ability to detain American citizens without a trial, and why "police union" is a misnomer. Kevin Gosztola, a writer for Shadowproof.com and co-host of the podcast Unauthorized Disclosure, Alex Friedmann, the Associate Director of the Human Rights Defense Center and managing editor of Prison Legal News, and Loud & Clear producer Nicole Roussell, join the show.
President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet in Helsinki, Finland on July 16. This will be the first meeting between the two leaders. Trump said that Syria, Ukraine, and "many other subjects" would be on the agenda, and he added that "getting along with Russia, China, and everybody else is a good thing." Brian and John speak with Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net whose most recent piece is "Sacrificing Gaza: The Great March of Zionist Hypocrisy."
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee this morning about the DOJ Inspector General's report of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server. Republicans demanded access to sensitive documents used in the investigation and Democrats demanded that the Republicans be denied. In the middle of the testimony, they broke to vote on a House Resolution demanding the documents. Ted Rall, an award-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist whose work is at www.rall.com, joins the show.
Two new reports by the UK's parliamentary intelligence and security committees reveal that Britain's MI-6 foreign intelligence service and MI-5 domestic intelligence service were linked to hundreds of cases of rendition and torture along with the United States in the years following the September 11 attacks. Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will likely face tough questions about what he knew and when he knew it. Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and author of the book "Destroying World Order: US Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11," joins Brian and John.
Angela Merkel is in trouble. The German Chancellor's coalition partner has threatened to withdraw from the government if she doesn't solve Germany's immigration crisis by this weekend, while Italy's new populist government said it would not accept any refugees back from Germany. Merkel said today that if an immigration agreement isn't hammered out this weekend, the very future of the European Union is in doubt. Berlin activist and journalist Diani Baretto joins the show.
Chinese President Xi Jinping told visiting US Defense Secretary James Mattis that China will "not give even one inch of territory" in the Pacific Ocean. Mattis's meeting with Xi comes as relations between the two countries have been marred by a trade war and by both militaries viewing each other with suspicion. Brian and John speak with Alfred McCoy, the Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book "In the Shadows of the American Century-The Rise and Decline of US Global Power."
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