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According to retired CIA officer John Kiriakou, one of the tapes deleted by the CIA in defiance of a court order would have shown the torture of al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah.

Does the ENDA justify the means? That's the question facing legislators and gay rights activists who support the current incarnation of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which has passed the U.S. House by a distressingly small 235-184 margin. The bill will head to the Senate, and then to President Bush for a signature or veto.

Guantanamo, lethal injection, all-white juries, child porn panderers, crack cocaine, and discrimination lawsuits--and the Supreme Court isn't even one-third of the way done selecting cases. It's going to be an interesting year.

All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California has demanded an apology from the IRS over an investigation into an October 2004 antiwar sermon.

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted 57-43 in favor of a bill written to give the 550,000 citizens of Washington, DC voting representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill, which may or may not have survived a court challenge, needed 61 votes to survive a Republican filibuster attempt and 67 votes to override a presidential veto.

On Monday, President Bush nominated retired U.S. district court judge Michael Mukasey as the next U.S. attorney general. What do we know about Mukasey, and why is he an unlikely choice for this administration? Plus: Find out why Mukasey's nomination is good news for Rudy Giuliani.

Louisiana's Third Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the conviction of Mychal Bell, the first of the Jena Six defendants to be found guilty. The case will most likely be refiled in juvenile court. No word on the other five black Jena Six defendants, or the white students who assaulted black students at a party the previous week and were never charged with anything at all.

In a story that troubles civil libertarians but surely warms the hearts of cranky librarians everywhere, six police officers used a taser against a student who disrupted a John Kerry town hall forum at the University of Florida this week. In other news, six members of the University of Florida Police Department apparently can't remove a student from a conference room without using a taser.

An Iowa district court has ruled that the state's marriage laws, which discriminate on the basis of spousal gender, are unconstitutional. Iowa's Supreme Court will eventually rule on the matter, and here's what I think they'll do.