Word: citizens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bybee Memo, a 2002 opinion authored by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, was brushed aside last week by a federal judge overseeing the nation's first-ever criminal trial of an American accused of torture abroad. The public defenders representing torture suspect Chucky Taylor, a U.S. citizen and the son of former Liberian military strongman Charles Taylor, submitted it for consideration as part of potential jury instructions. But Federal Judge Cecilia Altonaga rejected the terms laid out in the memo, saying, "I will not give an instruction that relies upon that memorandum as its authority...
...belief that it could provide legal cover to the acts he was accused of committing, which included electrocution of genitals, melting plastic onto a victim's flesh, pouring scalding water on a victim's hands. Instead, Judge Altonaga summarily dismissed the memo and, on Oct. 27, Taylor, an American citizen, was convicted on five counts of torture under a law known as the extraterritorial torture statute. The judge ultimately relied on the December 2004 Office of Legal counsel opinion that replaced the Bybee Memo, one that defines torture as "an act committed by a person acting under color...
...Some argue that it is my civic responsibility to vote. But many voters fail to fulfill a far greater responsibility–understanding the issues. Surveys have repeatedly demonstrated the colossal ignorance of the average citizen. A 2004 Cato Institute analysis of election surveys found that voters were startlingly unaware of relevant information. For example, in the 2000 National Election Study, the average respondent correctly answered only 14.4 questions out of 31. Only 50 percent correctly identified which party controlled the Senate before the election; only 11 percent of the survey respondents could identify the post held by William Rehnquist...
Fung said that he and his colleagues had been interested in user-generated information that is shared on Web sites like Wikipedia and TripAdvisor. He said he found that problems at voting sites could be fixed by allowing the average citizen to provide information, which could then be used by others like media agencies and other voters...
...create a better improved election administration at a state level or with federal regulations and more federal effort,” Fung said. “We ought to try those things, but another strategy would be grassroots, bottom-up, citizen-based monitoring...