The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York Oct. 2 overturned the convictions of Yemeni cleric Sheikh Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad and assistant Mohammed Zayed because of evidentiary errors that deprived the defendants of a fair trial. Al-Moayad and Zayed were convicted in March 2005 on charges that they lead a terror-funding network based in Brooklyn. At their convictions, both maintained that additional evidence on government surveillance recordings would have showed they were not guilty. During their appeal, Al-Moayad and Zayed argued that they had been entrapped by government informants and presented character witnesses who said neither of the two condoned violence and that they had spoken out against terrorist acts. (Jurist, Oct. 3)

Sarah Palin went on the offensive this weekend, accusing Barack Obama of "paling around with terrorists." (LAT, Oct. 5) When Obama's tenuous ties to ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers were brought up a few months back, we pointed out that some of those making hay out of it were themselves far cozier with "terrorists"—such as Pat Buchanan, whose 1996 presidential campaign advisor Larry Pratt "pals around" with Klan and Aryan Nations types. Buchanan now enthuses that "of the four debaters we’ve seen, she [Palin] was the most interesting, attractive of them all." (NYT, Oct. 3) Indeed, there's much evidence that Palin and Buchanan—and his vile sidekick Pratt—are the proverbial birds of a feather...

Iranian-born, neocon-friendly pundit and "journalist" Amir Taheri has been implicated in fabricated news reports—so take his sneering analysis of Barack Obama's recently released foreign policy positions as a propagandistic exercise. What he is aghast at we can perhaps take heart at. Will Barack Obama be the post-GWOT president? From the United Arab Emirates' Gulf News, emphasis added:

The Democratic Party website ExxonMcCain, delineating the Big Oil connections of several advisors to the GOP candidate, includes the dish on Randy Scheunemann—recently identified by Robert Scheer as a lobbyist for the Georgian government to grease NATO entry, and a veteran of the Project for a New American Century:

Buried in a White House proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at Guantánamo Bay, is a provision that calls on Congress to "acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us and who are dedicated to the slaughter of Americans."

With the choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is not backing down from oil drilling. Palin is a champion for drilling, the Bush-Cheney approach to energy policy that brought us $4-per-gallon gasoline and the rising threat of global warming.

Barack Obama's choice of Joseph Biden, the veteran Delaware senator and head of the Foreign Relations Committee, as his running mate is a depressing capitulation to conventionality that dangerously undercuts his much-hyped theme of "change"—especially given his telling flub at a Springfield, Ill., rally: "Let me introduce to you, the next president—the next vice president of the United States of America: Joe Biden." (Reuters, Aug. 23) Don't look now, Obama, but your Freudian slip is showing. Biden is not merely a pillar of the Beltway establishment, but has his own disturbing flirtation with the now almost universally hated neocons—the very people Obama has thus far successfully positioned himself in opposition to...

A judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia last week denied a request made by six ethnic Uighur Guantanamo detainees to be transferred to less restrictive facilities within the base. The petitioners argued that their solitary confinement in a higher security section of the base caused them mental suffering, but the court ruled that the detainees did not sufficiently demonstrate that they would suffer irreparable harm if they were not moved. Judge Ricardo Urbina ruled: