Our marriages often provoke us to throw the china and utter the unforgivables. The context is usually personal, not political, but either way, passions run high. In May, barring some unforeseen procedural hindrance, gay couples will wed for the first time ever in the U.S. They will have that opportunity by order of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which ruled last week that it is unconstitutional to deny them marriage licenses. Gays and lesbians across the country celebrated. Hundreds of ...

To see the conflict and our part in it as a tragedy without villains, war crimes without criminals, lies without liars, espouses and promulgates a view of process, roles and motives that is not only grossly mistaken but which underwrites deceits that have served a succession of Presidents. —Daniel Ellsberg THE issues were momentous, the situation unprecedented. The most massive leak of secret documents in U.S. history had suddenly exposed the sensitive inner processes whereby the Johnson Administration ...

BRITISH royalty reigns but does not govern. According to a famed British constitutional scholar, Walter Bagehot, Queen Elizabeth II "could disband the army; she could dismiss all the officers . . .she could sell off all our ships-of-war and all our naval stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a 'University'; ...

Every day, as he ambles through the cobwebbed halls of the New Orleans criminal court building, public defender Richard Teissier feels he violates his clients' constitutional rights. The Sixth Amendment established, and the landmark Gideon Supreme Court case affirmed, the right of poor people to legal counsel. At any given moment, when Teissier is representing some 90 accused murderers, rapists and robbers, his office has no money to hire experts or track down witnesses; its law library consists of a ...

On March 3, Sonam Tshering, a Buddhist monk, was sentenced to three years in prison in the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. His crime? Trying to smuggle $2.50 worth of chewing tobacco into Bhutan from India. In January, Bhutanese police caught the 24-year-old carrying 48 packets of tobacco while traveling from an Indian border town back home. Tshering was detained for more than a month, and, after a week-long trial, found guilty by a district court of violating ...

Sunday's presidential run-off in Haiti had been billed as the most important in the country's history. It came 14 months after the earthquake that devastated the capital Port-au-Prince, with international donors hesitating to fund crucial construction projects under the lame duck presidency of Ren Prval. The long run-up has had its share of drama: the return of two former rulers of the country, archenemies Franois "Baby Doc" Duvalier and Jean-Bertrand Aristide; a cholera outbreak; the disqualification of ...

Four U.S. service members died in a roadside bombing attack, and two civilians were killed in crossfire during a military operation, military authorities in Afghanistan said Friday. "This is a constitutional crisis," said Tsvangirai as he railed against President Robert Mugabe's party. "ZanuPF [Mugabe's party] cannot run government alone constitutionally and legally." Tsvangirai said his party will not attend cabinet meetings and the prime minister has also boycotted his meetings with Mugabe which occur every Monday. The party is not ...

Driving along a pockmarked road amid rocks and Joshua trees in a lonely southern California desert, religious controversy might be the last thing you'd expect to encounter. And if you don't look too closely, you're likely to zip right past the focus of a hotly contested Supreme Court battle. A federal judge has ordered the Mojave Cross, a war memorial erected by a veterans group 75 years ago, to be covered. It's boxed in plywood. The issue is less about ...

The U.S. State Department is calling on Honduras' de facto president to immediately rescind an emergency decree that limits constitutional rights such as freedoms of expression, travel and public congregation. "The freedoms inherent in the suspended rights are inalienable and cannot be limited or restricted without seriously damaging the democratic aspirations of the Honduran people," said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly in a statement late Monday night. Earlier Monday, Roberto Micheletti announced he would repeal the law, but it would ...

Zimbabwe's highest court granted a permanent stay of prosecution Monday to a leading human rights activist facing charges of plotting to topple President Robert Mugabe's government. The court said the abduction and torture in custody of Jestina Mukoko grossly violated her rights. Mukoko, the leader of Zimbabwe Peace Project, challenged her prosecution in an appeal to the country's Supreme Court saying state security agents had abducted her from her home during a dawn raid and tortured her while ...