Pirates have put Somalia back on the international agenda, but Somalia's people have yet to receive as much protection as the international tankers off-shore. The brutal, widely ignored conflict in Somalia has crept back into the headlines only after spawning a massive humanitarian crisis and Islamist extremism, as well as piracy. But to deal with these issues, the Obama administration will have to break with failed policies that have helped push Somalia into calamity.

With just four weeks till Obama's inauguration, the Bush administration's military commissions are supposed to be history. So why does the government act like they'll continue past January 20?

President-elect Barack Obama should implement “an unqualified return to America’s established system of justice for detaining and prosecuting suspects” when he fulfills his pledge to shut down the Guantánamo Bay prison camp and military commissions, four leading rights organizations said in a letter released today.

Spain should immediately halt plans to extradite an ethnic Chechen to Russia, where he will be at risk of torture.

Closing Guantánamo will not be easy. As David Cole points out, some of the detainees held there cannot be sent back to their home countries, and others are too dangerous to release. But while he insists that outsourcing the problem is not an option, he seems all too willing to bring the problem home.

Other EU governments should accept Portugal’s call to resettle Guantanamo detainees who cannot be returned to their home countries. Portugal is the first country to press publicly and formally for a coordinated EU resettlement plan.

When alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants entered the Guantánamo Bay courtroom Monday, they came armed with a plan to martyr themselves at the hands of a tainted legal system. By the afternoon, the plan was in disarray.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others announced that they plan to plead guilty to conspiring in the September 11 attacks and related crimes at a hearing before US military commissions at Guantanamo today. All five defendants face the death penalty.