July 6th, 2008: “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Antonio Taguba, the retired major general who investigated abuses in Iraq, declares in a powerful new report on American torture from Physicians for Human Rights. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” Read The Truth Commission by Nicholas D. Kristof
EVENTS ON THIS DAY — July 6th

• 1535 Sir Thomas More is executed in England for treason.
• 1785: Congress resolves that U.S. currency is to be named “dollar” & adopts decimal coinage
• 1798: U.S. law makes aliens “liable to be apprehended, restrained,… & removed as alien enemies”
• 1923: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed.
• 1958: Alaska becomes the 49th state
• 2001: Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleads guilty to 15 criminal counts and agrees to give a full accounting of his spying activities for Moscow
• 2005: New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed after refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of an undercover CIA operative’s name. (She was jailed for 85 days before agreeing to testify.)